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THE MAKING OF OUR COUNTRY 



Lincoln Raising the Flag — 1861 
On Washington's birthday, 1861, while on his way to his first 
inauguration, Lincohi raised the Stars and Stripes over the hall in 
Philadelphia in which the Declaration of Independence was adopted. 
In a speech that day Lincoln said that the Declaration gave liberty 
not alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world 
that in due time all men should have an equal chance. 




LINCOLN RAISING THE FLAG— 1861 



THE MAKING OF 
OUR COUNTRY 

A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 
FOR SCHOOLS 

BY 

SMITH BURNHAM, A.M. 

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, WESTERN 
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN 

ILLUSTRATED 

WITH THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY- 
FOUR ENGRAVINGS IN BLACK AND WHITE, 
FIFTY-ONE MAPS, AND EIGHT COLOR 
PLATES FROM THE J. L. G. FERRIS 
COLLECTION OF AMERICAN HISTORICAL 
PAINTINGS, BY SPECIAL PERMISSION 
OF THE ARTIST 




THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY 

Chicago PHILADELPHIA Toronto 



En? 

1T2.0 



Copyright, 1920, by 
The John C. Winston Company 



All Rights Reserved 



JAN -3 1921 

g)CU604836 



^n- 



PREFACE 

In "Our Beginnings in Europe and America," a European 
background book for the sixth grade in harmony with the 
report of the Committee of Eight upon the Study of History 
in the Elementary Schools and with the newer courses of study 
in our best public schools, the author briefly showed how the 
elements of our civilization grew from simple beginnings in the 
Old World and how in the fullness of time they were planted 
in America. In the present book for Grammar Schools and 
Junior High Schools, after a brief recapitulation of the story of 
discovery and early settlement in America, he continues to 
trace the development of civilization in our own country and 
to relate and explain the more important facts, movements, 
and problems in the origin and growth of the United States. 
It is believed that this book, like the earlier one, is in keeping 
with the suggestions of the Committee of Eight and that it 
meets the requirements of the more recent courses of study. 

In attempting to write a new school history of the United 
States the author has been guided by certain convictions which 
are the outgrowth of an experience of many years in the class 
room. The first and most fundamental of these convictions 
is that textbook writer and teacher alike must constantly 
keep in mind the stage of mental development of the pupils 
when they select and prepare the material of instruction. It is 
believed, however, that almost any topic in our history can be 
understood by children of Junior High School age if it is 
described concretely in clear and simple language. Such 
language the author has tried to use in this book. In the choice 
of material many unimportant facts and names, often found 
in textbooks, have been omitted in order to make it possible 
to give more attention to the men and the events that have 
played a vital part in the making of our country. These men 
and events have been presented in logical groups rather than 
in chronological order, because the fundamental ideas of growth 
and progress can be more clearly brought home to the pupils 
by this method of treatment. In the belief that history deals 
with past life in all of its phases the industrial, social, political, 
and intellectual sides of that life have each received due atten- 

(v) 



vi PREFACE 

tion. It has also been remembered that all sections of the land, 
the older East and the newest West, the wheat fields of the 
North and the cotton fields of the South, the populous cities 
and the sparsely settled plains, are parts of our country and 
that the story of the development of each of them is a part of 
our history. A special effort has been made to treat adequately 
the last fifty years of American life, the most important period 
in our history and yet the one most neglected in school work. 
The important part which the physical features of each section 
have played in determining the nature of its growth has not 
been overlooked. The winning of a vast, untamed continent 
for civilization, the most important and at the same time the 
most dramatic movement in our past, and the growth and 
meaning of democracy, the most momentous question affecting 
the present and the future of our country, are the main themes 
of this book. 

The purpose of every textbook is to help the pupils who 
study it to learn and to love the subject which it treats. The 
success of any textbook depends in large measure upon the 
teachers and the pupils who use it. May the author of this 
l)ook venture a few suggestions to the teachers who may teach 
it? First of all it is not a book to be memorized by the pupils. 
No textbook in history should be that. It is a book to be 
read, supplemented, thought about, and remembered. In 
teaching pupils to study any book the first step is to make sure 
that they read it in the sense of getting the author's thought 
from the printed page. The teacher can help at this point by 
anticipating and clearing up possible difficulties when assigning 
the lessons. The author has tried to help by a special effort 
to explain the more difficult topics in clear and simple language. 
The teacher ought to supplement any textbook in history by 
ample illustration and explanation drawn from her own reading 
and experience. The pupils ought to be given opportunities 
to supplement it by topical readings in other books. Teachers 
and pupils working together ought to do a great deal of thinking 
about the subject matter of the textbook. There is room here 
for much analysis, discrimination, comparison, judgment, and 
decision. When as a result of such study the class has decided 
that certain facts are important those facts ought to be remem- 
bered. Finally, every member of the class ought to be given 



PREFACE vii 

every possible opportunity to talk and to write about what 
he has studied. All these steps ought to be taken because the 
purpose of teaching history in school is not merely to instruct 
boys and girls about the past but to lead them to think, to 
feel, and to act in the present, and to help them to become 
better citizens and finer men and women in the future. 

Every effort has been made in this book to provide teachers 
and pupils with the aids they need in order to study the history 
of our country according to the plan outlined in the last para- 
graph. References, lists of topical readings, classified illus- 
trative literature, and questions and suggestions will be found 
at the end of each chapter. The References, which are pri- 
marily for the teacher, contain the names of a few of the best 
books upon the subject treated in that chapter. The Topical 
Readings are short, specific references to standard books that 
amplify or illustrate certain topics in the chapter in question. 
These readings vary greatly in length and in difficulty, a fact 
that the wise teacher will take into account in assigning them 
to individual pupils. It is not expected that every school will 
possess all the books named in these references and readings. 
Fortunate, indeed, is the school that has a quarter of them. 
But it is hoped that the Topical Readings will suggest to teachers 
the possibility of making and using similar lists from any 
material that may be available in their schools. The Illus- 
trative Literature lists will introduce teachers and pupils alike 
to a host of poets, novelists, and biographers, many of whom 
are the best interpreters of the life and of the spirit of the time 
about which they write. The Questions and Suggestions are 
of such a nature as to stimulate thought or encourage a little 
historical investigation by the pupils. 

The author is indebted to many friends for encouragement 
and for helpful suggestions during the preparation of this book. 
He desires to acknowledge with gratitude his special obligation 
to Dr. W. D. Lewis, Deputy Superintendent, Department of 
Public Instruction of the C'ommonwealth of Pennsylvania, and 
to Di'. J. L. Barnard of the Philadelphia Normal School for 
their thoughtful criticism of his work. 

Smith Burnham 
Kalamazoo, Michigan, 
August 1, 1920. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. European Beginnings in America 1 

Our History 1 

The European Background of Our History 2 

The Discovery of America 7 

The Winning of a Spanish Empire in America 9 

Latin America 12 

The Rivalry between Spain and England 15 

II. The Coming of the English 20 

The First English Colony 20 

The Beginnings of New England 24 

The Dutch and the Swedes in America 30 

A Group of Proprietary Colonies 32 

William Penn and the Quakers 35 

Why the EngUsh Came to America 37 

III. The Growth of the English Colonies in_ America . . 42 

The Spreading of the Settlements 42 

The Colonists and the Indians 45 

The Growth of Industries 49 

The Government of the Colonies 53 

The Colonies and the Mother Country 57 

IV. Our Colonial Ancestors 62 

The Europeans Who Became Colonists 62 

What the Colonists Brought from Europe to America . . 65 

What the Colonists Found in the New World 69 

The Homes of the Colonists 71 

Social Life in Colonial Days 75 

... The Schools of Our Forefathers 78 

- Colonial Churches and ReUgious Life 83 

V. The Rivalry of France and England in America. . 87 

The Beginnings of New France 87 

The French in the Mississippi Valley 90 

The EngHsh and French Colonies Contrasted 93 

A Half Century of Conflict 95 

The French and Indian War 99 

The Treaty of Paris 104 

VI. The Causes of the Revolution 107 

The True Character of the American Revolution 107 

A New British Policy in America 109 

The Stamp Act Ill 

The Second British Attempt to Tax the Colonists 113 

How Keeping British Troops in America Caused Trouble 1 17 



CONTENTS 



IPTER PAGE 

The Quarrel Over the Tea Tax 119 

Parliament Punishes Boston and Massachusetts 121 

The Growth of Union in America 121 

Drifting toward War 124 

VII. The Wah of the Revolution 128 

The Beginning of the War 128 

The Declaration of Independence 133 

The Loyalists or Tories 136 

The War in the Middle States 138 

Help from France 145 

The Beginnings of the American Navy 147 

The War in the South 149 

The Treaty of Peace 152 

The Men of the Revolution 153 

VIII. The Beginnings of Our Government 157 

A Federal Government 157 

From Colonies to States 157 

Our First National Government 158 

The Articles of Confederation 160 

The Critical Years of the Confederation. 161 

The Constitutional Convention 164 

The States Ratify the Constitution 167 

The Constitution of the United States 169 

IX. Winning a Foothold in the West 176 

England Gains Control of the West 176 

The First Pioneers beyond the Mountains 177 

Border Warfare in the Revolution 180 

How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest 182 

Rival Claims and Land Cessions 184 

The Public Land System 185 

The Ordinance of 1787 187 

The Growth of Western Settlement 188 

Life on the Frontier 190 

X. The Federalist Period 196 

Starting the Government 196 

Pjjtting the Finances of the Nation in Sound Condition . . 198 

The Beginning of PoUtical Parties 201 

The French Revolution and War in Europe 204 

How Washington Kept Our Country Out of War 206 

The Two Federalist Presidents 208 

Our Troubles with France 211 

The Fall of the Federalists . . 213 

XI. The Louisiana Purchase 217 

The Triumph of Democracy 217 

Thomas Jefferson, the Leader of Democracy 219 

Our Mississippi Trade 221 

The Colonial Scheme of Napoleon 223 

The Purchase of Louisiana 224 



CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER PAGE 

The Occupation and Exploration of Louisiana 225 

The Plot of Aaron Burr 228 

The Meaning of the Louisiana Purchase 230 

XII. The Unitm) States and Europe 233 

England and France Trample upon Our Rights on the Sea . 233 
Our Government Fails to Maintain Our Rights by Peace- 
ful Means 23G 

The "War Hawks" Have Their Way 237 

Our Efforts to Invade Canada 240 

The Navy in the War of 1812 243 

The British Attempts to Invade the United States 246 

The Results of the War of 1812 248 

The Settlement of Our Boundaries 250 

The Monroe Doctrine 251 

XIII. Life in the Early Republic. 255 

Then and Now 255 

Our People about 1800 257 

Farming in the Early Days of the Republic 261 

Manufacturing and Trade 262 

Transportation and Travel 264 

The Intellectual Life 266 

The Spirit of the People 269 

XIV. The Industrial Revolution 273 

New Ways of Working and Living 273 

Spinning and Weaving 273 

The Steam Engine 275 

The Cotton Gin 277 

Iron and Coal 278 

The Steamboat 279 

The Protective Tariff 281 

Turnpikes and Canals 283 

The Railroads. 286 

Great Changes in Farming 289 

The Meaning of the Industrial Revolution 291 

XV. The Rise of the Middle West 296 

A New Rush into the West. 296 

The Western Settlers 297 

The Geography of Western Settlement 298 

The Journey to the Frontier 301 

The Life of the Pioneer 304 

New States 308 

The Rising Western Cities 309 

The Influence of the West 312 

XVI. The Times of Andrew Jackson 316 

The Beginning of New Political Parties 316 

Andrew Jackson 318 

The Spoils System 321 

The Tariff and Nullification. 323 



Xll 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Jackson's Attack upon the Bank of the United States. . 326 

The Panic of 1837 327 

\The Rising Tide of Democracy 330 

A Period of Progress 331 

XVII. Slavery and Antislavery 337 

The Early History of Slavery in Our Country 337 

The Missouri Compromise 338 

Life in the Slaveholding States 340 

The Rise of the Antislavery Movement 346 

Three Great Abohtion Leaders 348 

The Slavery Question in Congress 350 

Slavery Becomes the Question of the Hour 351 

XVIII. The Winning op Texas and the Far West 355 

President Tyler Quarrels with the Whigs 355 

The Story of Texas 356 

The Settlement of the Oregon Country . . . .' 360 

The Election of 1844 361 

Our War with Mexico 363 

The Results of the Mexican War 367 

The Rush to CaUfornia 369 

XIX. Disunion Delayed by Compromise 374 

The Slavery Controversy 374 

The Union in Danger 375 

Clay Proposes a Compromise 377 

A Great Debate in the Senate 378 

The Compromise of 1850 Adopted 380 

The Fugitive Slave Law 381 

Years of Growth 383 

XX. Slavery Divides the Union 390 

The Quarrel Over Slavery Renewed 390 

The Struggle for Kansas 391 

The Beginning of the Republican Party 394 

The Dred Scott Decision 395 

The Debate between Lincoln and Douglas 396 

John Brown's Raid at Harper's F'erry 400 

The Election of 1860 402 

The Coming of Disunion 403 

XXI. The Civil War 407 

The North and the South at War 407 

The Work of the Navy 410 

"On to Richmond!" 412 

Opening the Mississippi 416 

The Story of Gettysburg 422 

From Chattanooga to the Sea 426 

Grant and Lee : . . 430 



CONTENTS 



Xlll 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XXII. The Country in War Time 435 

Life in the Army 435 

The Folks at Home 438 

Paying for the War 440 

The End of Slavery 443 

Abraham Lincoln 446 

XXIII. The Recovery of the Nation 451 

The Home-coming of the Soldiers 451 

The Reconstruction of the State Governments in the South 452 

The Quarrel between President Johnson and Congress. . . 455 

The Rise and Fall of the Carpetbaggers 457 

The Growth of a New South 460 

Politics After the Civil War 464 

Our Relations with Foreign Countries 466 

XXIV. New Ways of Working and Living 471 

The Age of Machinery 471 

New Sources of Power 474 

An Age of Railroads 476 

Our Growing Wealth 480 

Changes in Our Mode of Life 482 

XXV The Vanishing Frontier 488 

The Conquest of the Continent 488 

The Growth of Mining in the Rocky Mountain Region . . 489 

The Cattle Ranch and the Cowboy 493 

The Farmers Occupy the Far West 496 

The Last Indian Wars. . 501 

Our Newest States 502 

XXVI. Big Business and Social Unrest 506 

Parties and Presidents 506 

The Coming of Big Business 508 

The Organization of Labor 510 

The Tariff Question 512 

The Railroad Problem 514 

The First Attempts to Control Big Business 516 

The Campaign for Free Silver 516 

The Triumph of Big Business 520 

XXVII, New Social Ideals and Recent Progress 524 

Our Latest Presidents 524 

New Ways in Politics and Government 526 

New Laws for the Pubhc Good 529 

New Movements for Social Betterment 532 

Progress in Education 536 

Achievements in Literature, Art, and Science 538 



XIV 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XXVIII. Americans in the Making 542 

The " Melting Pot" 542 

Our Later Immigrants '. 544 

The Negroes in Our Midst 547 

Keeping Out the Undesirable 549 

Americanizing the Newcomers 551 

XXIX. The United States and the World 555 

Our American Neighbors 555 

The War with Spain .- 557 

Our New Possessions 560 

Our Policy in the Far East 563 

The Panama Canal 565 

Our Relations with Mexico 569 

XXX. Our Country in the World War 573 

The War in Europe 573 

Why We Entered the World War 576 

How We Helped to Win the War * 680 

Fighting in France 583 

War Work at Home 588 

How Peace Was Made 591 

The League of Nations 594 

Facing the Future 596 

Appendix 601 

The Declaration of Independence 60 1 

Washington's Farewell Address 604 

Lincoln's Ciettysburg Speech 606 

The Monroe Doctrine 606 

Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the United States. . . 607 

Index 609 



ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR 
Lincoln Raising the Flag — 1861 Frontispiece 

PAGE 

The Landing of William Penn — 1682 36 

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth — 1621 72 

The Libert^' Bell's First Note — 1753 136 

The Ship that Sunk in Victory — 1779 148 

Washington's Second Inauguration — 1793 208 

The End of the Civil War — 1865 431 

Sunk by a Submarine — 1918 578 

MAPS IN COLOR 

Territorial Growth of Our Country 1 

Latin America 12 

Land Claims of the States at the Close of the Revolution. ... 184 

The United States After the Purchase of Louisiana 224 

The United States in 1825 308 

The United States in 1850 380 

The United States in 1854 391 

The Confederate States 408 

Railroads of the United States 478 

Industries of the LTnited States 480 

Our Newest States 501 

The Western Front 547 

BLACK AND WHITE MAPS 

Trade Routes from Europe to the East 5 

Where Columbus Thought He Was Going 6 

Early Voyages to the New World 8 

Virginia and Her Neighbors 21 

Early Settlements in New England 27 

Early Settlements on the Hudson and the Delaware 34 

Settled Area at the Close op the Colonial Period 43 

Outline Map of Eastern North America 88 

French Explorations and Posts in the Valleys of the St. Law- 
rence AND the Mississippi 92 

North America Before and After the French and Indian War . . 104 

The Vicinity of Boston 130 

The War in the Middle States 143 

The Campaigns in the South 150 

The West at the Time of the Revolution 179 

The Frontier Just After the Revolution 184 

The Exploring Expeditions of Lewis and Clark and Pike .... 228 

The Canadian Border in the War of 1812 241 

The British Campaign Against Washington and Baltimore .... 247 

Jackson's Campaign in the South 248 

(XV) 



xvl BLACK AND WHITE MAPS 

PAGE 

The Erie Canal 285 

Physical Map of the Eastern Half of the United States . . . 300 

Free and Slave Territory After the Missouri Compromise . . 340 

The Oregon Country ; 360 

Fremont's Explorations in the West 364 

The Disputed Territory and the Campaigns of Taylor and 

Scott 366 

The Territory Acquired from Mexico 368 

The Eastern Campaigns of the Civil War 414 

The Western Campaigns of the Civil War 418 

The Battlefield at Gettysburg 423 

Sherman's March to the Sea and through the Carolinas .... 429 

The Alaska Purchase of 1867 467 

Showing Immigration to the United States Before and After 

1885 544 

The Latin-American Lands About the Caribbean Sea 554 

The Philippine Islands 561 

The United States and Its Dependencies and the Principal 

Trade Routes of the World 567 

The Five Great German Offensives of 1918 585 

The Battle of St. Mihiel 586 

The Battle of the Meuse-Argonne ... 588 



CHAPTER I 



European Beginnings in America 



Our History. — Three hundred years ago EngUshmen 
planted the civiHzation of the Old World upon the eastern border 




Four Periods of American Homes 
The log cabin of the early settlers, below it the frame house of colonial days. In the 
upper right hand corner a Southern mansion of civil war days, and below it a modem 
home of the colonial type of architecture. 

of the United States. Ever since that time hardy frontiers- How we 
men have been pushing steadily westward across the continent, grew 
These pioneers first occupied the Atlantic seaboard, then made 
their way through the gaps of the Alleghanies and overran 
the broad valley of the Mississippi; and later followed the long 
trails across the plains and mountains until they reached the 
shores of the Pacific. Through all these years the American 
people — the sons of the early colonists constantly reenforced 
by newcomers from Europe — have been busily at work devel- 

1 ' 



EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 



oping tho ricli icsoiirces of tlioir country, clearing away its 
forests, cultivating its fields, opening its mines, and building 
its mills and railroads. At the same time they have been 
founding new homes, establishing schools, and developing the 
governuKMit undcn- which we now live. The marvelous story 
of how all these things were done is the history of the United 
States. 

The United States is our country. It matters not whether 
we live in the crowded cities of the East or upon the vast 
Our country plains of Kansas or Oklahoma, among the cotton fields of 
the South or upon the wheat lands of the Dakotas, in Chicago 
by Lake Michigan or in San Francisco by the western sea, 
everywhere it is our country. It is our country, too, no matter 
who we are. We may trace ovir descent from the earliest 
colonists or we may be the children of immigrants who arrived 
only yesterday, but if we all love and serve the America in 
which we live, we all may proudly say, "This is our country." 
We are going to study this book in order to learn how this 
country of ours grew from the simplest beginnings to be the 
great democratic nation it is to-day. 

The European Background of Our History. — We cannot 
fully und(n-stand and appreciate our own 
history without knowing something of 
what our people have inherited from the 
Old World. The ancient Hebrews gave 
us our religion and many of our moral 
standards; the Greeks taught us to love 
the beautiful in art and literatvn-e; the 
Romans originated many of our ideas 
al)out law and government. All these 
peopk^s lived a long time before the dis- 
coveiy of America. 

In the earliest centuries of the Chris- 
tian era all the country bordering on the 
The Roman Mediterranean Sea was governed from Rome, and so this region 
Empire ^g^g called the Roman Empire. Nearly all the civilized people 
in the world lived in this empire. By civilized people we 
mean people who have written laws and a government that 
enforces obedience to these laws; who cultivate the soil; who 
carry on commerce; who have good houses and roads and ships; 



Our debt 
to the Old 
World 




Greek Soldiers 
It was such soldiers as 
these who saved freedom by 
defeating the Persians. 



THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND 




who have schools and books and pictures and music — in a word, 
we mean people who live much as we do now. 

Beyond the frontier of the Roman Empire the people 
were barbarians; that is, they had not yet learned to 
work steadily, they 
wandered about in 
tribes with very 
little government, 
they loved war and 
plunder, and they 
had no comfortable 
houses, no schools, 
and no written lan- 
guage. The bar- 
barians who lived 
north of the Roman 
Empire, beyond the 
Rhine a n d the 
Danube, were of 
the Teutonic race. 
Though fierce and 
warlike, the Teu- 
tons possessed many virtues which the older Romans had lost. 
They were valiant and liberty hjving, and many of our social 
ideas, with some of our forms of government, originated with 
them. The Teutonic tribes were attracted by the wealth of 
the Romans and attempted to win it for themselves. For a 
time the Romans kept them out, but at last they could do so 
no longer, and the Teutons overran the southern and western 
parts of Europe. Here they settled, and, mingling with the 
surviving Romans, became the ancestors of the European 
peoples of to-day. This fall of the Roman Empire happened 
in the fifth century of the Christian era. 

The Teutonic tribes lived in their new homes in their simple, 
barbarian manner, and much of the civilization of the ancient 
world disappeared. The period during which this state of 
affairs lasted is sometimes called the Dark Age because the 
people were so ignorant. But not all the civilized Romans 
had disappeared. Some of them were left, and little by little 
they taught their Teutonic conquerors to put away their old 



A Roman Galley 
It was in such ships as this that the Romans reached 
all the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. 



Our 

Teutonic 
ancestors 



The Dark 
Age 



EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 



The new 
peoples 



habits and thoughts, and to adopt the civiHzed ways of hving 
of the Romans. During this time the Teutonic peoples became 
Christian. 

In the course of tune these new peoples so far outgrew their 
old barbarian manners and customs and learned so much about 
the civilized ways of the Romans, that they came to love these 
ways and to have an intense desire to imitate them and even 
to improve them. This new longing led them to do many 
important things. During the long period we have been talking 
about they had been slowly forming new nations — the France, 







Crusaders on the March 



Spain, Italy, and England of to-day. Now they began to make 
their governments very much stronger, to establish schools, 
to write books, to paint pictures, to make inventions like 
gunpowder and printing, to trade with other countries, and 
to look about them for new things and strange adventures. 
These desires to increase their commerce and to see the world 
led directly to the discovery of America. 

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries great mihtary expe- 
ditions called crusades were undertaken by the people of 
Xhe western Europe for the purpose of rescuing the Holy Land 

Crusades from the hands of the Mohammedans. The crusades brought 
and their ^j^^ warlike men of western Europe in contact with the more 
highly civilized Greeks and Arabs of the East. The crusaders 
saw many new things which they wanted, and gradually a 
rich commerce grew up between Europe and Asia. Ships 



THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND 



laden with the woods and metals of Europe sailed from Venice, 
Genoa, and other Italian cities, to Alexandria, Antioch, and 
the Black Sea region, where their cargoes were exchanged for 
the cottons, silks, and spices of the Far East. Adventurous 
European travelers, of whom the most noteworthy was Marco 
Polo, visited eastern Asia, or Cathay, as they called it, and 
brought back fabulous stories of its wealth and even hearsay 
knowledge of rich islands lying in the ocean beyond Cathay. 




Trade Routes from Europe to the East 

Some time before the discovery of America this rich 
eastern trade suffered a great reverse. The Turks, a wandering 
race of barbarians who were moving westward, overran Asia The Turks 
Minor and, in 1453, captured Constantinople, which thus block the 
became the capital of their empire. This cut off the trade of to^^e Easf ^ 
the Black Sea region, and as the Turks extended their conquests 
toward the south, the other European trade routes to the East 
were in grave danger. All this was a fearful blow to the people 
of southern Europe who had grown rich bj^ trading with Asia. 
Their geographers and sailors began to plan how they could 
find a new and safer way of going to Cathay or the Indies. 

The Portuguese began the search. A member of their 
royal family, who was called Prince Henr}' the Navigator 



EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 



Iwcause of the docp in1(>i'est that he took in this work, scMit out 
How the expedition after expc(htion to explore southward along the 
found^a^new western coast of Africa. He hoped to find the southern end of 
way to India that continent, and thence to sail across the Indian Ocean to 

the Indies. At last, though 
not in Prince Henry's time, 
the Portuguese succeeded. 
Year after year they slowly 
traced the western coast of 
the Dark Continent of Africa 
to its southern extremity; 
and in 1497 Vasco da Gama, 
one of their sailors, rounded 
the Cape of Good Hope, and 
made his way to the city of 
Calicut in Hindustan. The 
Portuguese quickly followed 
up the advantage they had 
thus gairu^d, estal^lished trad- 
ing post s in the Far East, and 
in a few years, built up a rich 
connnerce with that part of 
the world. 

Meantime, Christopher 
Columbus, an Italian sailor 
who had married and settled 
down in Poi-tugal, became 
possessed with the idea that 
by steering boldly westward 
This idea did 




A Venetian Galley 
In such vessels the rich trade with the East 
was carried on after the Crusades. 



The idea of 
Columbus 



the earth is round, and that 

across the Atlantic, he could reach the Indies 

not originate with 

C'olumbus, by any 

means. For at least 

two thousand years 

a few of the wisest 

m(m had believed 

and taught it, but it 

had n(«ver be(m com- ^^^^ ^^,^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^.^^ 

monly accepted. It 

is the glory of Columbus that he was the first man who had 




THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 7 

the courage and fortitude to put it to the test. He was encour- 
aged to do so by his behef that the earth is smaller than it 
really is. This belief led him to estimate that the eastern coast 
of Asia lay about three thousand miles west of Spain. After 
vainly attempting to get the Portuguese authorities to assist 
him, Colum])us asked Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen 
of Spain, to fit out ships to try to find a westward way to the 
Indies and, after a long and most exasperating delay, they gave 
him the aid he sought. 




From the painting by Vanderlyn, Capitol, Washington 
The Landing of Columbus 
The discoverer is taking possession of the new land in the names of the King and 
Queen of Spain. 

The Discovery of America. — Early one summer morning 
in 1492 Columbus started out to prove that Asia could be 
reached by sailing westward. With ninety men in three small How 
ships he steered steadily into the West over an unknown sea. Columbus 
As weeks passed with no sign of land, the ignorant and super- strange 
stitious sailors became almost panic-stricken with terror, but lands beyond 
nothing could turn their iron-hearted leader from his purpose. ® ^ *^ 
At last, on October 12th, land was seen, and Columbus took 



8 



EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 



possession of it for Spain. Crowds of natives gazed in astonish- 
ment upon the strange white men from beyond the sea, and as 
Columbus felt sure that he had reached an island near India 
he called these native inhaloitants Indians. In reality he was 
thousands of miles from India and had landed upon a small 
island in the Bahamas. After cruising for ten days among the 
Bahama Islands, Columbus reached Cuba, which at first he 
believed to be Japan. A little later he discovered the island of 
Haiti and was charmed by the beauty of its scenery. He then 



Other 
explorers 
reveal a 




Early Voyages to the New World 

returned to Spain, where Ferdinand and Isabella gave him a 
royal welcome and listened with intense interest to the story of 
his adventures. Columbus made three other voyages to the 
new lands which he had found. On his third voyage he reached 
the coast of South America, which he seems to have thought 
was a continent lying far to the southeast of Asia. On his 
fourth and last expedition he sailed along the coast of Central 
America, which he felt sure was the long sought mainland of 
Asia. In this belief he died, in 1506. 

While Columbus was making his later voyages, other 

Spanish and Portuguese explorers were tracing the eastern 

coast line of South America. Slowly the idea that this strange 

New World land was a new continent lying to the southeast of Asia grew 



A SPANISH EMPIRE IN AMERICA 9 

to a certainty in their minds. One of the explorers of the shores 

of this new continent, an Itahan named Americus Vespucius, Vespucius 

wrote an account of his voyages, and the reading of this account 

led a geographer of the time to suggest that the new part of the 

world ought to be called America. At first this name was applied 

only to South America, but in the course of time it came to be 

given to the whole of the New World. The discover}^ of a 

great sea beyond the isthmus of Panama by Balboa helped to Balboa 

strengthen the growing behef that what we call South America 

was a new continent. This belief was made a certainty by the 

wonderful voyage of Ferdinand Magellan. Starting from Spain Magellan 

in 1519, Magellan passed through the strait which now bears 

his name and sailed westward for months over the vast expanse 

of water which he named the Pacific Ocean. At last he reached 

the Philippine Islands and learned that he was near the Indies 

which Columbus had sought. Magellan was killed by the 

natives of the Philippines, but one of his ships finally reached 

Spain by way of the Cape of Good Hope, thus completing the 

first circumnavigation of the globe. The marvelous voyage 

of Magellan proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the 

land found by Columbus was a New World, separated from 

Asia by the greatest ocean on the globe. 

The Winning of a Spanish Empire in America. — Spanish 
settlement in America began with the second voyage of Colum- 
bus, when he planted a colony in Haiti. The first Spanish The first 
colonists brought with them horses, cattle, and other domestic Spanish 
animals, the seeds of vegetables, grains, and fruits, and sugar- 
cane which was destined to be more important than any of 
these in the history of the West Indies. While the earliest 
Spanish settlements were on the island of Haiti, within twenty 
years after 1492, the Spaniards had taken possession of Porto 
Rico and Jamaica and had begun the colonization of Cuba. 

Many of the earlj^ Spanish pioneers were led to the New 
World by their thirst for gold, which was l^elieved to be very 
abundant in the Far East. Some gold was found in the islands The 
of the West Indies, but not enough to satisfy the ardent desires ^'^'^^q^* 
of these Spanish soldiers of fortune. Soon the more daring 
among them began to push on to the mainland in their quest 
for wealth. Those who first reached the coast of Mexico were 
amazed to find natives who wore cotton garments, lived in 



10 



EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 



huge houses built of sun-dried brick, and built great temples 
of stone. The Spaniards were also much excited by the stories 
they heard about a great city, rich in gold, in the interior of 
Mexico. In 1519 Ileinando Cortes, a bold yet crafty soldier, 
led an expedition into this tempting land. He found that 
Mexico was rich in gold and silver, and that its people possessed 
tools and weapons of copper, cultivated great fields of corn, and 
lived in large cities in which were great tower temples where 
human beings wei'(! sacrifi('ed to please the gods whom the 
Mexicans worshipt'd. After a long and bloody war, Cortes 




Frnni till- iiiiinliiiij bu Liziiino 
Pizarro Leading the Spaniards to the Conquest of Peru 

conquered the entire countiy and made the City of Mexico 

the capital of a vast Spanish province. 

The Spanish treasure seekers early heard of a rich country, 

far to the south, called Pcn-u, and about a dozen years after the 
The conquest of Mexico they found it. The Peruvians were in 

Spaniards advance of the Mexicans in civilization. They raised great 
Americ? ^^'^^^^ °^ ^^^^ ^"*-^ cotton; kept large flocks of llamas and 

alpacas; built massive stone buildings; and connected their 

cities by magnificent roads. They were rich in gold, silver, 

and copper, and w{>re skilful workers in all these metals. 

Francisco Pizarro led the Spaniards in the conquest of Peru. 

Through treachery he and his men soon got possession of that 



A SPANISH EMPIRE IN AMERICA 



11 



country and won an enormous treasure in gold. Other Spanish 
explorers quickly added all of South America except Brazil 
to the Spanish Empire. Soon after the discovery of America, 
Spain and Portugal had agreed that Spain should have the 
new lands found west of a meridian three hundred and seventy 
leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands and that Portugal 
should have those lying east of that line. As Brazil is situated 
east of this line of demarcation, it became a colony of Portugal. 




From the pnititing by Powdl 
De Soto's Discovery of the Mississippi 



After Cortes and Pizarro had won fame and fortune in 
Mexico and Peru it was natural that other adventurous Span- 
iards, burning with the lust for gold, should explore the interior Spanish 
of North America in the hope of finding lands and peoples as rich explorers in 
as those already conquered for Spain. De Soto and Coronado America 
are the best known of many bold spirits who found disappoint- 
ment in this northern quest. De Soto landed in Florida in De Soto 
1539 with over six hundred picked men. For three years they 
wandered through the swamps and forests of our southern 
states, fighting Indians but never finding the gold they sought. 



12 



EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 



A Spanish 
empire in 
America 



At last De Soto died and was buried in the Mississippi River 
which he had found. After terrible suffering the survivors 

Coronado of his party reached Mexico. At the very time that De Soto 
was wandering over the Gulf states, Coronado started from 
Mexico with eleven hundred men to conquer seven rich cities 
which were believed to be somewhere toward the north. This 
expedition wandered on probably as far as the present state 
of Kansas. Coronado never found the rich cities which he 
sought, but he learned much about the great plains. The 
expeditions of De Soto and Coronado are important because 
they gave the Spaniards a claim by right of discovery to all 
the regions w'hich they visited. 

By the second half of the sixteenth century the Spaniards 
had won an empire in the New World which included the 
islands and countries bordering the Gulf of Mexico and the 
Caril)])can Sea, and which extended thousands of miles to the 
southward in South America. This Spanish territory was 
vast in extent and unsurpassed in natural resources. For 
many years the large income which Spain derived from the 
mines of Mexico and Peru made her the richest and most 
powerful nation in Europe. This mighty Spanish Empire in 
the New World was built up before any other European nation 
had planted a single settlement in North America. 

Latin America. — The Spaniards first brought European 
civilization to the New World, and in the course of time they 

Origin of the spread it over the greater part of the western hemisphere 

name south of the United States. We call the Spaniards one of the 

Latin races, because their language and some of their ways of 
living were derived from the ancient Romans. Because the 
Spanish language and Spanish manners and customs prevail 
in the West Indies, Mexico, Central America, and a large part 
of South America, w^e call this vast region Latin America, and 
speak of its people as the Latin Americans. 

This does not mean that the people in the Latin-American 
countries which were once Spanish colonies are all of Spanish 

Races origin. Some of them are the offspring of the Spanish pioneers, 

others of the negro slaves who were brought from Africa; 
but by far the greater part of the population of Latin America 
are the descendants of the Indians whom the Spaniards found 
in America or are of mixed Spanish, Indian, and negro blood. 






ARCTIC 




Tropic of Capricorn 



LATIN-AMERICA 



Territory in which Spanish 
or Portuguese is spoken 



' 



LATIN AMERICA 



13 



Instead of driving away the Indians, as the Enghsh settlers 
did in our own country, the Spanish pioneers brought the 
natives under their government, compelled them to put away Treatment 
many of their barbarous practices like the offering of human of the 
sacrifices to their heathen gods, and required them to work at ^"^^^^^^ 
least a part of the time upon the land of their Spanish masters. 
The Spaniards established mis- 
sions, in which the Indians 
were taught the Christian 
rehgion and instructed in 
many of the industries and 
arts of civilized life. They 
also brought to the New World 
the various domestic animals 
and the grains, vegetables, and 
fruits of Europe. In spite of 
the harsh and cruel treatment 
which they often suffered, 
the Indians of Latin America 
learned many useful lessons 
from their Spanish conquerors. 

Wc have seen that the 
lure of gold first attracted the 
Spaniards to Mexico and Peru 
and led them to explore many 
other parts of the New World. 
Sooner or later, however, most 
of the gold hunters settled 
down to making a hving by 
farming and grazing, which, with mining, became the chief 
industries of the Spanish colonies. As years passed and 
more settlers came, hundreds of Spanish towns were estabhshed 
in America. Every year great galleons, hke the one pictured 
on this page, carried the sugar, hides, and drugs of the 
colonies to Spain, where they were exchanged for the wine and 
oil, the figs, raisins, and olives, and the cloth and u'on of the 
mother country. 

The Spanish colonists in America were without political 
freedom or religious liberty. They were not permitted to govern 
themselves and did not enjoy the right to worship as they Government 




A Spanish Galleon Sailing from 
America to Spain 



14 



EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 



pleased. Their political affairs were in the hands of governors 
and other officers sent out from Spain, and every one was 
required to accept the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church 
which was established by law. But as the government in 
Spain would not permit any one to come to America unless he 
was a true Spaniard and a good Cathohc, religious differences 
were not so acute as among the English settlers. 

In spite of this lack of freedom in politics and religion 
many of the best featm-es of Em'opeau life were brought to 




An Old Spanish Mission, Santa Barbara, California 

Influence Latin America by the Spaniards, who were not lacking in 
energy in their efforts to civilize the people of their new empire. 
The missions among the Indians were the outposts of this 
civilizing work. At a very early date higher schools and 
colleges were established and great universities grew up in 
Lima and in the City of Mexico. The first printing press in 
America was brought by the Spaniards in 1536. By the 
patient and persistent use of all these means the Spaniards 
succeeded in permanently stamping their language and their 
religion upon all the countries of Latin America 



SPAIN AND ENGLAND 



15 



Sir John Hawkins 



John 
Hawkins 



The Rivalry between Spain and England. — Tho Spaniaitls 
won their vast empire in Ani(M-ica during' the first half of the 
sixteenth century; in the second half of that century they English 
fought a great war with England which determined the destiny beginnings 
of North America. Only fi ve years after the first voyage of 
Columb us, John Cabot, a-n Italian sailor in the English seryice,_ 
found a strange Jand far to the west of Ireland, and possibly 
he vi sited it again the following year; but there was little real 
English interest in America before the days of Queen Elizabeth, 
who ruled England from 1558 to 1603. In her reign English 
sailors became the active rivals of the Spaniards for the rich 
trade of the New World. JTlic discoveries of John Cabot, 
which had been almost forgotten for years, were now remem- 
JSered and made the basis of an English claim to America. 

John Hawkins l)egan 
the English traffic with 
Spanish America by trading 
negro slaves to the Spanish 
planters in the West Indies 
in exchange for sugar, hides, 
and other products of the 
islands. Spain objected to 
the presence of these EngHsh 
traders, and, on his last 
slave-trading voyage, Ha.w- 
kins lost hundreds of his 
men in a ficM'ce fight with a 
Spanish fleet. Among the 
survivors there was a young 
sailor named Francis Drake, 
who was destined to become 
a terror to the Spaniards 
and the greatest English 
seaman of his time. Drake 
led several expeditions 

against the Spanish cities in America. On his most 
famous voyage he entered the Pacific Ocean through the 
Strait of Magellan, plundered the Spaniards on the west coast 
of South America, explored the coast as far north as California, 
and finally reached England by way of the Cape of Good Hope, 





" ■" m 


1 




p 




i' ■ " -^ 


W\ 


f 


' ^-■; ■ 


L 


•^''mB 


^^^^Ih^^' 


.giM^'^ yggMj^H 



Francis 
Drake 



16 



EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 



Frobisher, 
Davis, and 
Hudson 



thus circumnavigating the globe. About the same time Martin 
Frobisher and John Davis and, a httle later, Henry Hudson, 
boldly steered their ships among the icebergs of the far North 
in a vain search for a passage through the northern part of 
North America into the Pacific Ocean. The straits and bays 
which bear the names of these daring sailors tell us where they 
sought for a northwest passage to Asia. 




l-'r,it/i till- painting by J. E. MiUais 
The Boyhood of Raleigh 
As he listens to the sailor's tale of the land beyond the sea, Raleigh resolves to win it 
for England when he is a man. 

Meanwhile other Englishmen were planning the beginnings 
of settlement upon the coast of America. Sir Humphrey 
Unsuccessful Gilbert made an unsuccessful attempt to colonize in Newfound- 
attempts at land and was lost at sea while on his way back to England. 
Gilbert's unfinished work was continued by his half brother, 
Sir Walter Raleigh, one of the most famous Englishmen of 
Queen Ehzabeth's time. Raleigh sent two companies of settlers 



SPAIN AND ENGLAND 



17 




The Spanish 
Armada 



to the coast of Virginia but neither succeeded in planting a 
permanent colony. However, Raleigh's failures brought 
about the introduction of two important native products of 
the New World into the British islands: tobacco, which from 
this time the English began to use, and the potato, which 
Raleigh planted upon his lands in Ireland. 

The attempts of the English to settle in lands which Spain 
claimed as her own, and the piratical attacks of Drake and his 
associates upon Spanish ships and Spanish cities in the New Enmity 
World, stirred up the wrath of Spain. Then, too, the second £^*^^^ ^^^j 
half of the sixteenth century was an age of religious strife in Spain 
Europe. Spain was the defender of the Catholic faith, while, 
more and more, England and Holland-came to be recognized as 
the champions of the Protestant cause. As time passed, colonial 
rivahy and religious hatred combined to make England and 
Spain the bitterest of enemies. 

At last the Spanish king, Philip II, resolved to stop, once 
for all, the aggression of the 
English. In the smiimer of 1588 
he sent a great fleet of one hun- 
dred and thirty ships to begin 
the conquest of England. This 
"Invincible Armada," as it was 
called, was to sweep the English 
navy from the sea and then to 
transport a great Spanish army 
from the Netherlands to the 
shores of England. In this 
moment of utter peril, English 
liberty was saved by the bold 
seamen who had been trained for 
years under Haw^kins, Drake, 
and Frobisher. As the Ai'mada 
passed up the English channel 
the English captains attacked it 

and for six days there was a great running fight. On the last 
day of this famous battle Drake and his men drove the Armada 
before them through the strait of Dover into the North Sea. 
Then a great storm arose and completed the destruction which 
the English had begun. Only a remnant of the Spanish fleet 

succeeded in returning to Spain. 
2 



Queen Elizabeth Knighting Drake 
upon the Deck of His Flagship 



18 EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 

The defeat of the "Invmcible Armada" saved England 
and decided the destiny of America. Spain and England were 
Results of rivals for the possession of North America. Before England 
its defeat ^.Q^^[(\ hope to succeed in planting colonics on the western shore 
of the Atlantic she must be able to defend them against the 
attacks of Spain. When the gallant sailors of Queen Ehzabeth 
broke the power of Spain upon the sea, and established that of 
England in its place, they made possible an English-speaking 
America. For this reason the defeat of the Spanish Armada 
is one of the most important events in the history of the 
United States. 



REFERENCES. 

Cheyney, European Background of American History; Fiske, The 
Discovery of America; Bourne, Spain in America; Channing, History 
of the United States, Vol. 1; hummis, Spanish Pioneers; Froude, English 
Seamen of the Sixteenth Century. 



TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Europe Which Found America. Burnham, Our Beginnings in 
Europe and America, 1 88-207. 

2. The Early Life of Columbus. Fiske, The Discovery of America, 
I, 342-364. 

3. Where Did Columbus Get His Geographical Ideas? Fiske, The 
Discovery of America, I, 3.54-381. 

4. Prince Henry the Navigator. Fiske, The Discovery of America, 
I, 316-326. 

5. The Story of Magellan. Fiske, The Discovery of America, II, 
184-210. 

6. The First American Traveler. Liunmis, Spanish Pioneers, 101-116. 

7. The Pioneer Missionaries. Jjimimis, Spanish Pioneers, 149-157. 

8. The Man Who Would Not Give Up. Lummis, Spanish Pioneers, 
215-224. 

9. Early Spanish Adventures in the United States. Parkman, Pioneers 
of France in the Neiv World, 9-19. 

10. The Sea Kings of England. Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, 
I, L5-40. 

11. The Story of the Spanish Armada. Froude, English Seamen in 
the Sixteenth Century, 176-228. 



REFERENCES 19 

ILLUSTRATIVE IJTERATURE. 

Poems: Joaqiun Miller, Columbus; howell, Columbus; Sidney Lanier, 
The Triumph; Wallace Rice, The First American Sailors; Alfred Noyes, 
Drake; Macaulay, The Armada; Tennyson, The Revenge. 

Stories: Knox, The Travels of Marco Polo; King, De Soto and His 
Men in the Land of Florida; Barnes, Drake and His Yeomen; McMurry, 
Pioneers on Land and Sea; Cooper, Mercedes of Castile; Simms, The 
Damsel of Darien; ■ Vasconselos; Wallace, The Fair God; Kingsley, 
Westward Ho! 

Biographies: Adams, Christopher Columbus; Stapley, Columbus; 
Markham, Columbus; Guillemard, Life of Ferdinand Magellan; Corbett, 
Sir Francis Drake; Edwards, Sir Walter Raleigh; Ober, Heroes of Ameri- 
can History. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. For what are we indebted to Europeans who lived before the dis- 
covery of America? 

2. What traits of character in Columbus do you most admire? Why? 
Would it have made any difference in the history of the New World if it 
had been named for Columbus? 

3. Was the voyage of Magellan or the first voyage of Columbus the 
greater achievement? Why? 

4. Were any of our domestic animals found in America before its 
discovery by Europeans? What common grains, vegetables, and fruits 
were unknown in America until they wore brought here from Europe? 

5. In what ways was the Spanish Conquest an injury to the Indians 
of Mexico and Peru? In what ways did they gain by it? 

6. What do we import from the West Indies? From Mexico ? From 
South America? What do we sell to these countries? 

7. How did the defeat of the Spanish Armada influence the history of 
America? 



CHAPTER II 

The Coming of the English 

The First English Colony. — At the dawn of the seventeenth 

centur3^ English sea power was firmly established by the defeat 

The of the Spaniards, and England was ready to begin colonizing 

founding of in America. In 1606, James I gave permission to a group of 

London merchants to plant a colony in Virginia, and early in 



Virginia 




The Settlement of Jamestown 



1607, the first permanent English settlement in our country 
was made about fifty miles up the James River by one hundred 
men sent over by this London Company. King James 
.promised that the settlers of Virginia should lose none of their 
"nghts as Englishmen. These pioneers named their town 
Jamestown in honor of the king. The site of Jamestown 
proved unhealthful, and before winter came, one-half of the 
settlers were in their graves. The lives of the other half were 
only saved by the courage and good sense of Captain John 
Smith, who came to the front as a born leader always will in an 
emergency. For the next two years Captain Smith was the 
life of the httle company at Jamestown. The early settlers in 

20 



FIRST ENGLISH COLONY 



21 



Virginia were poorly fitted for the work they had undertaken. 
Many of them were what the EngUsh call ''gentlemen;" that is, 
they had never worked and did not know how to do so. Captain 
Smith kept these men at their necessary tasks by enforcing the 
rule that "he that will not work shall not eat." He also traded 
with the Indians and spent much time in exploring the country. 
In 1609, John Smith returned to England. The sufferings 
at Jamestown during the following winter were probably the 
most dreadful ever endured by any group of settlers in America. 
Left without a com- 



Sufferings of 
the settlers 



petent leader the 
settlers quarreled 
among themselves 
and wantonly pro- 
voked the hostihty 
of the Indians. As 
winter came on, ex- 
posure, famine, and 
disease began their 
deadly work. In 
six months, five 
hundred settlers 
were reduced to 
sixty "most miser- 
able and poor 
wretches." Only 
the timely arrival 
of Lord Delaware 
with supplies saved 
the life of the col- 
ony. This awful winter proved a turning point in the history 
of early Virginia. One by one the mistakes of the earliest 
years at Jamestown were corrected, and slowly the settlers 
learned in the hard school of experience how to live in a new 
country. 

At first the settlers in Virginia owned all things in common, 
but in 1611 Governor Dale put an end to this system by giving 
each man land for his own. It was soon found that the settlers Early- 
worked very much better when each man owned the fruits of ^^*^ed 
his own labor. Nearly all the earliest comers to Virginia were 




Virginia and Her Neighbors 



22 



COMING OF THE ENGLISH 



Tobacco 



men, and their settlements were little more than military- 
camps. Presently the London Company began to remedy this 
condition by sending over young women who became the wives 
of the planters and soon these new families established homes 
upon the banks of the James like those they had known in the 
mother country. 

But the thing that did most to promote the growth and 
prosperity of Virginia was the cultivation of tobacco. Just at 

this time the use of to- 
bacco was rapidly in- 
creasing in Europe, and, 
consequently, this product 
of the Virginia plantations 
found a ready market at 
a good price. As it was 
found that the soil of Vir- 
ginia is especially adapted 
to the culture of the to- 
bacco plant, more settlers 
came from England and 
new plantations were 
opened along the wide, 
deep rivers which are the 
natural highways leading 
into the interior of the 
country. 

The rapid growth of 
tobacco planting in early 
Virginia created a great 
demand for laborers to 
work upon the plantations. To supply the demand convicts 
and kidnaped persons were sent from England, and their serv- 
ice sold to the planters for life or for a term of years. Such 
persons were called indentured servants. In 1619, a Dutch 
trader sold the Virginians twenty negroes. This was the be- 
ginning of African slavery in the colony, but for many years 
the white servants greatly outnumbered the negro slaves. 

The early governors of Virginia who were appointed by the 
^,^^, growth LqjjjJqji Company were often harsh and tyrannical in their 
government rule. Presently the control of the company in London passed 



Unfree 
labor 




Forcing a Man to Emigrate 



FIRST ENGLISH COLONY 



23 



into the hands of men who beheved in the right of the people 
to govern themselves. Accordingly, they instructed the gover- 
nor of Virginia to call together representatives of the different 
settlements to make laws for the colony. This body, which 
met in 1619, was called the House of Burgesses, and was the 
first legislative or lawmaking body in America. In 1624, the 
London Company had its charter taken from it, and Virginia 
became a royal colony; that is, henceforth the king appointed 




The Provincial Capitol of Virginia, Williamsburg 
The laws of the colony were made here for more than a century. 

the governor. The people, however, retained the right to 
elect their men to the House of Burgesses. 

Virginia and her near neighbor, Maryland, were very much 
alike in their physical geography. Both bordered upon Chesa- 
peake Bay, and in both there were many lazily flowing rivers The 
upon whose banks the earliest settlements were made. The o^M^yland 
first settlement in Maryland was made at St. Mary's, in 1634, 
by Lord Baltimore, whose purpose was to found a home for 
his fellow Catholics where they could escape the persecutions 
from which they suffered in England at that time. Although 
Lord Baltimore was the proprietor or owner of Maryland, he 



24 



COMING OF THE ENGLISH 




^.--^^if!^ _ 



rf^^^- 



Tr 






^ih 




gave the settlers a large share in their own government and 
granted them land upon very easy terms. Protestants and 

Catholics alike were 
W?^Wj^^^^^ welcomed from the 
start, and in 1649 
a famous law was 
passed, giving relig- 
ious toleration to 
all Christians. Life 
upon the farms and 
plantations of early 
Maryland was very 
similar to that in 
Virginia. 

The Beginnings 
of New England.— 
The Church ,.*'""' ''^'t'^Ji i In order to under- 

of England 'J ^--l^ j st-md the begm- 

The Planting of Lord Baltimore's Colony at uiugS of NeW Eng- 

St. Mary's. Maryland, in 1634 ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ 

who the Puritans were and what they wanted. When Eliza- 
beth was Queen of England the greater part of her people 
belonged to the Church of England, or the Episcopal Church, 
as we call it in America. This church was established by law, 
which means that the people were forced to support it and 
expected to worship in it. 

• But many of the English people were dissatisfied with the 
form of government and the mode of worship of the estabUshed 
The Puritans church. These people were called Puritans because they wanted 
to purify the church from the forms and ceremonies, like making 
the sign of the cross or reading prayers out of a book, which were 
distasteful to them. The Puritans were also opposed to the 
brutal games and sports of their time, and to the love of display, 
the frivolity, and the Sabbath breaking which they saw all 
around them. They not only wanted greater simplicity in 
worship, but plainer living", stricter Sabbath keeping, and pm'er 
morals. 

A few of the Puritans were so displeased with the church 
The Pilcrim *^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ altogether and set up little independent sects 
Fathers of their own. Those who did this were called Separatists 



BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND 



25 



because they thus separated from the Church of England. A 
little company of Separatists, who had left England in search 
of a place where they could have freedom to worship God, 
founded the colony of Plymouth upon the coast of New England 
in 1620. The members of this little band of Separatists who 
settled at Plymouth are called the Pilgrim Fathers because of 
their wanderings in search of "a faith's pure shrine." But 
the great body of the Puritans did not want to separate from 




From the Painting by P. F. Rolhermcl 
Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth 



the church. They desired to remain in it but to change its 
form of worsliip and its government in such a way that it 
should become a Pm'itan church. 

We believe that all men ought to be free to worship God as 
they choose. We call this religious toleration. But in the 
sixteenth century very few people in all the world believed in How 
religious toleration. It was then thought very important that '^^ ficnt'on 
all the people should believe the same things and worship in drove many 
the same manner. Queen Elizabeth and King James I pun- Y^"*^^ *° 
ished the Puritans in order to force them to conform to the 
estabUshed mode of worship, and King Charles I, who succeeded 



America 



26 



COMING OF THE ENGLISH 



James I in 1625, persecuted the Puritans more severely than 
his father had done. While Charles I was king, a great number 
of English Puritans fled from religious persecution in England 
to the wilderness of New England. 

This English exodus to New England began in 1628 when 
a group of Puritan leaders obtained a grant of land and sent 




Early Settlements in New England 



Massa 
chuset1;s 



The John Endicott with sixty settlers to take possession of it. The 

founding of next year the men who held this grant of land organized them- 
selves into a trading company, and the king gave them a 
charter which named their corporation the Governor and 
Company of Massachusetts Bay, and authorized it to establish 
and govern a colony in New England. Nearly four hundred 
settlers were at once sent out and, in 1630, John Winthrop, one 



BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND 



27 



of the noblest men in our early history, led a thousand Puritans 
to Massachusetts Bay. Winthrop settled at Boston, which at 
once became the chief town of the colony. During the next 
ten years the tyranny and persecution of Charles I drove more 
than twenty thousand Puritans to America. Many new towns 
were founded, farms were cleared, trade sprang up, and soon a 
vigorous English life had taken root in the soil of Massachusetts. 

Although the Puritans 
came to Massachusetts to 
escape the religious persecu- 
tion in England, they did not 
practise religious toleration in 
their new home. They wanted 
to establish a Puritan state 
and to exclude all others from 
it. One of their leading min- 
isters said, " He that is willing 
to tolerate any religion besides 
his own either doubts his own 
or is not sincere in it. " When 
Roger Williams, a minister at 
Salem, taught that all men 
"should have liberty to wor- 
ship God according to thehght 
of their own consciences," 
and maintained that the only 
rightful way in which the set- 
tlers could get the land was by 
purchase from the Indians, 
the Puritans of Massachusetts 
determined to send him back 
to England. But Roger Wil- 
liams fled from the men sent 
to arrest him, and after a winter of great suffering in the wilder- 
ness established a Httle settlement which he named Providence. 
This was the beginning of the colony of Rhode Island. 

Soon other settlers, some from England and some from 
Massachusetts, came to Rhode Island where there was 
freedom of religious belief. Among them was Mrs. Anne 
Hutchinson, a very prominent woman of Boston who was 




Roger 

Williams 

seeks 

freedom in 

Rhode 

Island 



Puritans Going to Church 



28 



COMING OF THE ENGLISH 



Other 
settlers 
leave 
Massa- 
chusetts 



banished from Massachusetts because the Puritan leaders 
did not hke her rehgious opinions. With her family and 
friends, Mrs. Hutchinson began a settlement at Newport 
which was later joined to the one at Providence. Other 
friends of Mrs. Hutchinson who left Massachusetts founded 
several towns in New Hampshire, where Portsmouth and 
Dover had already been begun by the followers of Gorges and 
Mason, two Englishmen who had received a grant of land 
between the Merrimac and the Kennebec rivers. 




Welcomed at Providence by Roger Williams 



Connecticut, the last of the New England group of colonies, 

was also begun by people from Massachusetts. Some of the 

The origin of early Connecticut settlers left Massachusetts because they 

Connecticut disliked the government of that colony, while others were 

attracted by the fertility of the valley of the Connecticut 

River. In 1636, Thomas Hooker, the pastor of one of the 



BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND 



29 



Massachusetts churches, led his whole congregation through 
the wilderness to the banks of the Connecticut, where they 
founded the towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield. 
In the meantime, a little settlement named Saybrook had been 
begun at the mouth of the Connecticut River by John Winthrop, 
a son of the Massachusetts governor. Two years later a com- 
pany of Puritans from London settled at New Haven. In the 
course of time all these little settlements were united to form 
the colony of Connecticut. 




. Henry Hudson Exploring the Hudson River 
This explorer saw many Indians while ascending the river. 

The life of the people was very much the same in all the 
early Pm-itan colonies in New England. Everywhere the 
settlers lived on small farms and each family rarsed most of Life in early 
its own food supply. The earhest settlers boasted of their great fn^^nd 
crops of corn. One of them in writing to his friends in the 
mother country said, "Our turnips, parsnips, and carrots are 
here both bigger and sweeter than is ordinarily to be found in 
England. Here are stores of pumpkins, cucumbers, and other 
things of that nature which I know not." The same writer 



30 COMING OF THE ENGLISH 

complained of the mosquitoes and of the bitter cold of the 
winters. 

The Dutch and the Swedes in America. — In 1609, two 

years after the founding of Jamestown, HenryHHudson, an 

The English sailor in the service of the Dutch, while searching for 

discovery of a northwest passage to India, foun d the mouth of the great 

p^tor '^^^^ Xiver which now bears his name. In his little ship, the Half 

Moon, he explored the Hudson River as far as the present site 

of Albany and reported "that the land was of finest kind for 

tillage, and as beautiful as the foot of man ever trod upon." 



River 



r 



^^^^d 



New Amsterdam in 1656 

The Dutch claimed all the region which Hudson visited and 
named it New Netherland. 

Within five years of the day the Half Moon entered the 

Hudson River, the Dutch had a permanent trading station on 

New j\lanhattan Island where New York City now stands, and 

Netherland another at Fort Nassau near the present Albany. For some 
founded , , ,. i i i i 

years these places were tradmg posts rather than real settle- 
ments. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was given 
the exclusive right to colonize New Netherland. Two years 
later this company sent the first party of permanent settlers 
to the banks of the Hudson. Some of them stopped on Man- 
hattan Island while others went up the river to Fort Nassau. 
The Dutch colony of New Netherland grew very slowly. 



THE DUTCH AND THE SWEDES 



31 



It had a rich fur trade, but very few farmers came from Holland 
to settle in it. Unlike its neighbors, the New England colonies, Its slow 
New Netherland did not have self-government. The people growth 
were ruled by a governor and other officers sent out by the 
Dutch West India Company. The most famous of the Dutch 
governors of New Netherland was the last one, Peter Stuy- 
vesant. On his arrival at New Amsterdam^ as the town on 
Manhattan Island was called, he said to the people, "I shall 
govern you as a father his children." He was as good as his 
word and ruled with an 
iron hand, but the col- 
ony grew and prospered 
under his sway. Gover- 
nor Stu>"vesant's most 
serious troubles were with 
intruders from other 
countries who were trying 
to get a foothold on the 
soil of New Netherland. 
The Dutch claimed 
that New Netherland 
included the valleys of 
the Delaware and the 
Connecticut, as well as 
that of the Hudson and 
established trading posts 
on both these rivers. In 
1638 the Swedes made 
a settlement upon the 
banks of the Delaware 
and named their colony 
New Sweden. The Dutch 
protested against this in- 
vasion of territory which they claimed, but as they wanted 
the friendship of the Swedes in Europe at this time, they did 
nothing more. By 1655 affairs had so changed in Europe that 
the Dutch thought it time to act. Governor Stuyvesant 
marched against New Sweden with a large force and the 
Swedish settlers surrendered to him. They were not molested 
but became subject to the government of New Netherland. 




New Sweden 
conquered 
by the Dutch 



Tearing up the Call to Surrender 
Stuyvesant wanted to fight the English but the 
people would not support him and he 
pelled to surrender. 



was com- 



32 



COMING OF THE ENGLISH 



New 

Netherland 
taken by the 
English 



Revolution 
in England 
checks 
settlement 
in America 



The second 
period of 
English 
colonization 



On the Connecticut the Dutch were less fortunate. They 
built a trading post on that river, but the English came so thick 
and fast that they were forced to abandon it. Soon English 
colonists began to encroach upon the Dutch settlements on 
Long Island and west of New Haven. The English had always 
claimed that New Netherland belonged to them, and at last 
King Charles II made up his mind to seize it. In 1664, 
Colonel Nicolls, with four ships and five hundred veteran English 
troo ps, appeared before New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant, the brave 
old Dutch governor, wanted to fight to the last ditch, but the 
people, who were weary of his arbitrary ways and thought that 
they would have more liberty under an English government, 
would not support him. He was obliged to yield, and New 
Netherland passed peacefully into the hands of the English. 

A Group of Proprietary Colonies. — All the colonies whose 
beginnings we have thus far traced were founded before 1640. 
By that year the tyranny and persecution of Charles I had 
grown so bad that the English people would no longer endure 
them. The efforts of Parliament to bring about reforms led 
to a civil war in which the king was defeated. In 1649, Charles 
I was put to death by the victorious Puritans, and England 
was proclaimed a republic, although it was really ruled by 
Oliver Cromwell, the great Puritan general at the head of the 
army. When Cromwell died, there was no one strong enough 
to succeed him and, after two years of confusion, the English 
people decided to restore the monarchy. Accordingly, Charles 
II, the son of Charles I, became king in 1660. During the period 
of revolution in England, between 1640 and 1660, no new 
English colonies were begun in America, although some of the 
Cavaliers, as the friends of Charles I were calknl, came to live 
in Virginia. 

Charles II was a selfish and pleasunvloving king, and 
quickly gathered about him friends like himself. For twentj^- 
five years, from 1()60 to 1685, he lived in the midst of a gay, 
frivolous, and wicked court. This reign was the s(K!ond period 
of English colonization in America. The king rewarded the 
friends who had helped him recover the throne, and paid some 
of the men to whom he owed money by giving them great tracts 
of land in America. Every English colony planted in America 
during this second period of settlement was proprietary, which 



PROPRIETARY COLONIES 33 

means that the men to whom these colonies were granted owned 
the land in them and possessed certain rights of governn.ent 
over the actual settlers. 

Carolina was the first colony established in this period. 
In 1663, Charles II gave the land lying between Virginia and 
Florida to eight of his friends who asked him for it in the hope Carolina 
of increasing their wealth and importance. Some years before founded 
this the first real settlement in the Carolina region had been 
begun by some Virginians who had moved southward into the 
wilderness along the Chowan River near Albemarle Sound. 
The new proprietors sent a governor and more settlers from 
England to this Albemarle settlement and in time the colony 
of North Carolina grew up about it. The first settlement in 
South Carolina was made in the neighborhood of Charleston 
in 1670. 

At first the proprietors of Carolina did not intend to have 
two colonies, but the Albemarle and Charleston settlements 
were so far apart that it was more convenient to give each of Carolina 
them a separate government, and quite naturally the names divided 
North and South Carolina came into common use. In 1729 
the proprietors sold their rights to the king. The two Carolinas 
were then completely separated and each of them became a 
royal province. 

There was a striking contrast between North Carolina and 
South Carolina. The former has a sandy or swampy coast 
with few good harbors, and most of its early settlers lived on North and 
small farms in the interior of the colony. In South Carolina, ^ "*j^ 
on the other hand, the colonists lived near the coast, and Charles- contrasted 
ton soon grew to be an important seaport. The growing of 
rice on large plantations worked by gangs of negro slaves came 
to be the leading industry in South Carolina. For a part of 
each year the rich rice planters lived in the fine mansions which 
they built in the city of Charleston. 

More than sixty years after the beginning of South Carolina 
another colony was founded still farther to the south. The 
first settlement in Georgia was made at Savannah in 1732 by Georgia 
James Oglethorpe, an English soldier who wanted to set up a 
military outpost near the Spanish frontier of Florida and at the 
same time to give a new chance in life to those poor people in 
England who were put in prison in those days because they 



34 



COMING OF THE ENGLISH 



could not pay th^ir debts. Georgia grew very slowly and was 

the youngest and weakest of the colonies at the end of the 

colonial period. 

We have seen how brave old Peter Stuyvesant was obliged 

to surrender New Netherland to the English. In 1664, Charles 
New York II gave this Dutch province to his brother James, Duke of 

York and, in honor 
of the new proprie- 
tor, the name of the 
colony and of its 
principal town was 
changed to New 
York. In 1685 the 
Duke of York be- 
came king of Eng- 
land as James II, 
and New York then 
became a royal 
province. The Eng- 
lish conquest of 
New Netherland 
brought few chang- 
es in that colony. 
Perhaps the most 
important of these 
changes was the 
giving of more pow- 
er to the people to 
manage their own 
local affairs. For 
many years there 
were more Dutch- 

Early Settlements on the Hudson and the Delaware lyipri th'in Etlfflish- 

men in New York. Slowly more settlers came, English, Scotch, 
French Huguenots, and Germans. 

The same year that the Duke of York received the gift of 

New Netherland, he sold the part of it which we call New 

New Jersey Jersey to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. After 

changing hands several times, New Jersey became a royal colony 

in 1702. There were a few Dutch living in New Jersey before 




WILLIAM PENN AND THE QUAKERS 



35 



1664. After that date, settlers came to this colony from Eng- 
land, from New England, and especially from Scotland, where 
a horrible persecution of the Presbyterians just at this time 
drove many members of that sect to America. 

William Penn and the Quakers. — Pennsylvania, the last 
of the group of proprietary colonies begim in the days of Charles 
II, was founded by William Penn, and his fellow Quakers were The Quakers 
its early settlers. The Quakers, or Friends, as they called 
themselves, were members 
of a rehgious sect which 
arose in England in the 
seventeenth century. The 
Quakers were plain in 
dress and speech. They 
looked upon all war as 
wrong, taught the equality 
of all men, and believed 
that God speaks dhectly 
to the soul of every man 
who listens with an atten- 
tive mind. They felt that 
there was no need of re- 
ligious ceremonies, priests, 
or ministers. There are 
stin many Quakers in 
Philadelphia and in neigh- 
boring parts of Pennsyl- 
vania. 

William Penn, the 
greatest man in the early 
colonial history of Amer- 
ica, was the son of an ad- 
miral in the British navy. 

Early in hfe he became a Quaker and went about the country 
preaching his faith among the people. As the Quakers were 
persecuted in England in those days, more than once Penn 
found himself in prison. But this persecution only made hun 
chng more resolutely to what he believed to be right. 

As years passed, Penn grew to be a wise and farseeing 
man, the foremost leader of his sect in England. For a long Pennsylvania 




A Quaker Trial 

" The Quakers were persecuted in England in William 

those days and often punished for preaching Penn 

their faith." y & i'enn 



36 



COMING OF THE ENGLISH 



Penn's wise 
policy 



He visits 
Pennsyl- 
vania 



time he had been thinking of making a settlement beyond the 
Atlantic in which his persecuted Quaker brethren could live 
in peace. At last the opportunity to carry out such a plan 
arose. The king owed his father, Admiral Penn, sixteen 
thousand pounds, and after the admiral's death, William Penn 
offered to take a tract of land in America in place of the money. 
Charles II readily accepted this offer and gave Penn a vast 
region extending five degrees west of the Delaware River. 

The king named the new 
colony Pennsylvania in 
honor of Admiral Perm. 
William Penn adver- 
tised his colony widely, sold 
land- to the settlers on very 
easy terms, and promised 
them perfect liberty to be- 
lieve and worship as they 
pleased. Every man was to 
be permitted to vote, and 
Penn at once drew up a 
''Frame of Government" 
which gave the people the 
right to govern themselves. 
In a letter to the people 
already living in Pennsyl- 
vania the new proprietor 
said, "You shall be gov- 
erned by laws of your own making, and live a free and, if you 
will, a sober, industrious people." 

These attractive conditions soon brought many settlers to 
Pennsylvania. In 1682, the year in which Penn arrived in his 
colony, nearly three thousand people joined him, and the 
following year fifty ships came with settlers. Penn spent two 
years in Pennsylvania, making friends with the Indians, 
planning the chief city of the colony, which he named Philadel- 
phia, the city of "brotherly love," and organizing the govern- 
ment. In 1684 his business interests in England required 
his return to that country, where he spent the remainder of his 
life, with the exception of a second visit to Pennsylvania in 




William Penn in Quaker Garb 



T)iE Landing of \\ illiam Tenn — 1082 
The founder of Pennsylvania came to America in the autumn of 
1682. After stopping at Chester, he ascended the Delaware River 
in an open boat and landed by tiie side of a new hovise known in 
early Philadelphia history as the Blue Anchor Tavern. In the 
picture the inhabitants are flocking to the shore to greet the 
proprietor of the colony. In the welcoming throng are several 
Indians whose hearts Penn had already won by his ea.sy confidence 
:uul familiar speecli. 



AND WHY THEY CAME 



37 



1696. In his absence he was represented in his colony by gov- 
ernors whom he appointed. 

The early Quaker settlers of Pennsylvania were thrifty 
people who came well supplied with tools and provisions, and 
consequently escaped the extreme hardship and suffering which Growth of 
were so prevalent in the early history of Virginia and New *^® colony 
England. The English Quakers continued to come to Pennsyl- 
vania in considerable numbers until about 1700. After that 
time most of the immigrants to Penn's colony were Germans, 
who fled from tyranny and religious persecution in their native 
land, and Scotch-Irish from the north of Ireland. 




William Penn's Home in Philadelphia During His Second Visit 



Why the English Came to America. — We have now briefly 
traced the origins of all those settlements in the New World 
which in the course of time grew into thirteen strong colonies. Motives of 
We shall next study more definitely why these settlements were t^® colonists 
made at all. Why did the kings of England encourage every 
attempt to plant a colony in America? What made the rich 
men of the English nation invest their money so freely in 
colonial enterprises? What motives led so many Englishmen 
to brave the perils of the sea and the hardships of life in the 
wilderness in their efforts to estabhsh new homes beyond the 
stormy Atlantic? 



38 



COMING OF THE ENGLISH 



Desire for 
wealth and 
power 



To promote 
trade 



To find 
homes for 
English poor 



The long struggle between England and Spain in the six- 
teenth century did much to turn the attention of the English 
nation to America. Spain had built up a rich empire in 
America. Englishmen were fascinated by the tales of the gold 
and the jewels which the Spaniards had found in the New 
World. They wanted to share in this wealth, and at the same 
time the}^ were eager to break the power of Spain and extend 
the dominions of their own nation. Some of the early English 
explorers came to trade with Spanish America or to plunder 
Spanish ships and Spanish cities. Others sought in vain for 
a passage through North America to the Pacific Ocean that 

they might share in 
the rich traffic with 
the Far East. All 
these expedition s at- 
tracted attention to 
America, and open- 
ed the way for Eng- 
lish settlement on 
its shores. 

p]ngland,~ then 
as now, was depen- 
dent upon foreign 
countries for many 
articles of common 
use. The traders 
of Portugal brought the spices and silks of the Orient; the 
countries of southern Europe furnished wines and dried fruits; 
from the lands bordering upon the Baltic Sea there came fur and 
hides, and timber, pitch, and tar for ships. The English govern- 
ment encouraged the planting of colonies in America in the 
hope that in time they would supply their mother country 
with these needed commodities and at the same time offer a 
good market for the goods, like linen and woolen cloth, which 
the English people made to S(41. 

At the time of tlie first settlements in America, Englishmen 
thought that their country had too many people in it. One 
writer said, ''The poor starve in the streets for want of labor." 
Another wrote of "our poor sort of people, which are very many 
amongst us, and living altogether unprofitable, and oftentimes 







A Trading Post on Kent Island in Chesapeake Bay 



AND WHY THEY CAME 



39 



to the great disquiet of the better sort." The Enghsh kings 
encouraged colonization, for one reason, because they thought 
that it would relieve the poverty of their people by removing 
swarms of idle persons to America. 

Some of the rich men who invested their money in colonial 
enterprises were moved by the desire to convert the Indians to 
the Christian faith. Others, like Lord Baltimore, William Mixed 
Penn, and James Oglethorpe, wanted to make life easier for motives 
the persecuted and poverty-stricken in England. But the 




Converting the Indians to the Christian Faith 



From an old print 



chief motive with nearly all of them was the hope of making 
a large profit upon the money they invested. 

Many of the Puritan settlers in New England and some of 
the Catholics of Maryland, the Quakers of Pennsylvania and 
the Cavaliers who came to Virginia after the death of Charles I, Desire for 
fled from religious persecution or political oppression in Eng- freedom and 
land. But the chief motive which brought the bulk of the uving 
early English colonists to America was the hope of making a 
better living than they had ever enjoyed in the mother coun- 
try. Even the dangers and the uncertainties of life in the 



40 COMING OF THE ENGLISH 

New World with its possibilities of great success made a strong 
appeal to many daring and adventure-loving men who were 
tired of their humdrum life in England. 

Not a few of the early colonists came because they were 
sent. The city of London, for example, paid the expense of 
sending its pauper children to Virginia. Sometimes vagabonds 
and criminals were sent to America or offered a pardon on the 
condition that they would voluntarily go to the colonies. 
Sometimes wealthy people in England subscribed money to 
provide poor emigrants with tools, clothing, provisions, and 
passage to one of the colonies. Sometimes poor men agreed 
with a ship captain to serve for a term of years in payment for 
a passage to America. The captains sold the services of these 
men to colonial farmers and planters, to whom they were bound, 
or "indentured," to serve out their promised time. In all 
these ways many a poor Englishman gained a new start in 
life in a new land. 



REFERENCES. 

Thvvaites, The Colonies; Eggleston, The Beginners of a Nation; 
Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors; The Beginnings of New England; 
The Dutch and Quaker Colonies; Tyler, England in America; Channing, 
History of the Uuiled States, Vols. I-IL 



TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Early Life of Captain John Smith. Fiske, Old Virginia and 
Her Neighbors, 1, 80-9L 

■ 2. How Captain John Smith Bought Corn of the Indians. Fiske, 
Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, I, 1.32-141. 

3. Toleration in Maryland. Browne, Maryland, 67-71. 

4. The Pilgrims in Their English Home. Eggleston, The Beginners of 
a Nation, 149-157. 

5. The Causes of the Great Puritan Exodus. Eggleston, The Begin- 
7iers of a Nation, 191-199. 

6. The Story of Anne Hutchinson. Eggleston, The Beginners of a 
Nation, 329-341. 

7. Life in New Netherland. Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies, 
\, 1.3-21. ' 

8. The Swedes and the Dutch on the Delaware. Fiske, The Dutch 
and Quaker Colonies, 1, 237-242. 



REFERENCES 41 

9. The Early Life of William Penn. Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker 
Colonies, II, 114-118. 

10. The Beginnings of Georgia. Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neigh- 
bors, II, 333-376. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Drayton, To the Virginian Voyage; Stevenson, Henry Hud- 
son's Quest; Hemans, Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers; Longfellow, The 
Courtship of Miles Standish; Pierpont, The Pilgrim Fathers; Whittier, 
John Underhill; Cassandra Southivick ; The King's Missive. 

Stories: Cooke, Stories of the Old Dominion; My Lady Pokahontas; 
Drake, The Making of New England; Irving, Knickerbocker's History 
of Neio York; Hawthorne, Grandfather's Chair; Dix, Soldier Rigdale; 
Austin, Standish of Sta7idish; Betty Alden; Goodwin, The Head of a 
Hundred; Sir Christopher; Kennedy, Rob of the Bowl; Johnston, To 
Have and to Hold. 

Biographies: Warner, Captain John Smith; Johnson, Captain John 
Smith; Twichell, John Winthrop; Straus, Roger Williams; Tuckerman, 
Peter Stuyvesant; Holland, William Penn; Bruce, James Edward Ogle- 
thorpe. 

I 
QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. If you were about to settle in a new land what kind of location 
would you choose for your house? Why? 

2. What kind of house could the early settlers build out of the 
materials at hand? What tools did they need to bring with them from 
England? 

3. What differences in cUmate did the early colonists find when they 
came from England to America? Why was there so much sickness among 
the earliest colonists? 

4. What is religious toleration? Are people more or less tolerant now 
than they were in early colonial times? Why? 

5. Ask the teacher to explain what a charter is. 

Q. Locate on an outline map all the places named in this chapter. 
7. Make a list of all the reasons which led Englishmen to colonize 
in America. 



CHAPTER III 



The Growth of the English Colonies in America 



The Spreading of the Settlements. — All the English 
colonics in America except Georgia were begun in the seven- 
teenth century. Virginia and Maryland, all the Puritan 
colonies in New England, and the Dutch and Swedish settle- 
ments upon the Hudson and Delaware rivers were planted 
before 1640. We have seen tliat the Carolinas, New York, 
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were established during the 
reign of Charles II l^etween 1660 and 1685. When the colonial 
period of our history ended in the Revolution, Georgia was a 
little less than fifty years of age, and Pennsylvania had not 
quite reached the century mark. All the other colonies were 
more than one hundred years old, and many of them were 
nearly one hundred and fifty. The most important fact in 
this century or more of colonial history was the steady growth 
of the small settlements of early colonial time into vigorous 
states that declared their independence of Great Britain in 
1776. 

This growth of the colonies took place in the most simple 
and natural way. New settlers from the Old World, and boys 
who grew to manhood in the early settlements, pushed farther 
into the country, settled upon wild land, and began to build 
homes of their own. Sometimes hunters or exploring parties 
brought back glowing reports of the beauty or the fertility of 
some valley far in the interior, and the more ambitious and 
daring among the pioneers went in little companies to possess 
it. Soon the long silence of the forest was broken by the 
ringing sound of their axes, a clearing was made, log cabins 
were built, and in this way a new settlement was established. 
This steady spreading of the settlements into the interior 
of the ("ountry was attended by toil, hardships, and no little 
Hardships of danger. It took years of haixl work to cut down and luirn the 
the settlers heavy timber with which the land was covered, to clear the 
new farms of stumps and stones, to build houses and barns, 
and to open roads through the forests to connect the new 

42 



SPREADING OF THE SETTLEMENTS 



43 



The 

influence 
of the rivers 



settlements with the older ones. Our colonial fathers and 
mothers were men and women of industrious habits, of great 
strength and endurance, and of steadfast courage. Only such 
people could survive in the long hard struggle with the 
wilderness. 

Some of the early settlements, like Boston, New York, and 
Charleston, were made along the coast; others, like Jamestown 
and Philadelphia, 
were established 
upon the banks of 
navigable rivers. 
They all grew in 
the same way, 
spreading into the 
interior along the 
rivers and their 
tributaries because 
these waterways 
were easy roads to 
travel. Towns grew 
up near the mouths 
of the rivers. The 
furs, lumber, and 
farm produce of the 
colonics were 
bi'ought down the 
rivers to be ex- 
changed for the 
wares which the 
merchants of the 
towns had imported 

from England. In the course of time wagon roads were opened 
from the sea ports into the interior. In Virginia the ships of 
England came up the rivers to the plantations to trade, and 
consequently few towns developed in that colony. 

This map shows the settled area of the colonies at the 
close of the colonial period of our history. Nearly all the 
land in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut was in Extent of 
the hands 9f actual settlers. Elsewhere in New England the colonial 
settlements were confined to the coast, except where the 




Settled Area at the Close of the Colonial Period 



44 



GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES 



pioneers had advanced up the valleys of the Connecticut, 
Merrimac, and Kennebec rivers in New Hampshire and Maine. 
Long Island and the valleys of the Hudson and the Mohawk 
were the only parts of New York yet occupi(Hl by white men. 
From New Jersey to Virginia the settlers had pushed into the 
interior as far as the Blue Ridge Mountains, and were abeady 
in possession of some of the rich limestone mountain valleys 
like those of thie Potomac and the Shenandoah and the fine 
Cumberland Valley in Pennsylvania. In the Carolinas and 




The 

influence 

of the 

Appalachian 

mountain 

system 



Loading Tobacco Ships in the James River 

Georgia nearly all the colonists lived within one hundred miles 
of the coast although some hardy frontiersmen had made then- 
way up the rivers far beyond this point. 

Except in the far south, nearly all the good land between 
the sea and the Appalachian mountain system was occupied 
by settlers by the close of the colonial period. The mountain 
system which extends from New England to Georgia exerted 
a very great influence upon our early history. If it had not 
been there the colonists would have scattered widely in a 
search for the best lands. But the difficulty of passing this 
mountain l)arrier held them for a hundred years between the 



COLONISTS AND INDIANS 



45 



mountains and the sea. Here they grew strong, learned to 
be neighborly, developed their institutions, and kept in close 
touch through their commerce with the mother country beyond 
the Atlantic. Thus when the colonial period drew to an end 
the descendants of the early settlers in America had firmly 
established themselves upon the Atlantic seaboard, and were 
ready to begin the conquest of the great Mississippi Valley 
beyond the mountains. 

The Colonists and the Indians. — During the century or 
more while the colonists were winning and settling the land 
from the Atlantic Coast to the Alleghany Mountains they The Indians 
were beset by many perils. By far the most serious of these 
dangers was the hostility of the Indians, as the native inhabi- 
tants of America have been called ever since the time of 
Columbus. The Indians are often called the Red Men though 
they really were brown in color with a slight tinge of copper in 
some cases. They were a 



tall, finely formed race of 
men, with high cheek bones, 
small eyes, and long, 
coarse, black hair. They 
were clad in the skins of wild 
animals, although in sum- 
mer the men wore very little 
clothing and the children 
none at all. They lived in 
rude huts called wigwams. 
Some of these Indian 
houses were built by set- 
ting saphngs in the ground, 
bending them together at 
the top, and covering the 
rounded frame thus formed 
with brush, bark, weeds, 
and leaves. Other Indians built "long houses" by setting 
upright posts in the ground, laying a roof of poles, and then 
covering the whole structure with bark shingles. Some of 
these Indian "long houses" were a hundred feet long, fifteen 
or twenty feet wide, and large enough to accomodate several 
families. 







Indian Wigwam 



46 



GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES 



The number of Indians in the United States when the 
white men began to settle in the country was not large. They 
Tribes and lived in small tribes scattered here and there in the wilderness, 
races Tribes of Indians who spoke languages which were very much 

alike are sometimes grouped together to form what are called 
linguistic; families. There was a large number of these families 
in America, but the English colonists came in contact with 
only three important groups, the Algonquins, the Iroquois, and 
the Muskhogean, or Southern family. 

The Algonquins were the most numerous. They occupied 

the country from the Car- 



Algonquins 



Iroquois 



Southern 
Indians 



Indian life 



olinas northward to Hud- 
son Bay, and from the 
Atlantic Coast to the 
MisSsissippi River. The 
Narragansetts, the Pequots, 
the Lenape, and the Shaw- 
nees were some of the Al- 
gonquin tribes whom the 
settlers knew best. The 
Iroquois lived in New York 
in the midst of the vast 
Algonquin territory. The 
most savage, crafty, and 
daring of all the Indians, 
the Iroquois, were the terror 
of their neighbors. Their 
five great tribes, the Mo- 
hawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, 
Cayugas, and Senecas, were 
called "The Five Nations" by the white people. The names 
of these tribes have been given to an important river and to 
four beautiful lakes in the state of New York. The Musk- 
hogx^an, or Southern Indians, lived in the country between 
South Carolina and the Mississippi River. The Creeks and 
Cherokees were the most important members of this group. 

The most important need of the Indians, as of all other 
people, was a supply of food. They lived upon game, fish, 
and the wild berries, fruits, and edible roots which they found. 
Some of the tribes also cultivated patches of corn, beans, 




An Indian Warrior 



COLONISTS AND INDIANS 47 

squashes, and tobacco. The Indians possessed no domestic 
animal except the dog. The men were hunters, fishers, and 
warriors. It was the work of the women to prepare the food, 
cultivate the crops, and dress the skins which were used for 
clothing. The men made bows and arrows, tomahawks and 
war clubs, and graceful birch bark canoes. The women molded 
useful pottery, wove beautiful baskets, and fashioned garments 
of soft deer skin, which they decorated with beads and feathers. 

The real nature of the Indian has been described best by 
Francis Parkman, the most fascinating of American historians, 
who wrote a charming series of books about the French and The nature 
Indians and their wars with the English colonists. He says, ?^ }^^ 
"Nature has stamped the Indian with a hard and stern physi- 
ognomy. Ambition, revenge, envy, jealousy, are his ruling 
passions. . . . With him revenge is an overpowering 
instinct; nay, more, it is a point of honor and duty. ... A 
wild love of liberty, an utter intolerance of control, lie at the 
basis of his character, and fire his whole existence. . . . 
With him the love of glory kindles into a burning passion, and 
to allay its cravings, he will dare cold and famine, fire, tempest, 
torture, and death itself. These generous traits are overcast by 
much that is dark, cold, and sinister, by sleepless distrust and 
rankling jealoiisy. Treacherous himself, he is alwaj^s suspicious 
of treachery in others. Brave as he is — and few of mankind are 
braver — he will vent his passion by a secret stab rather than an 
open blow. His warfare is full of ambuscade and stratagem." 

Such were the savage neighbors the earliest English 
settlers found in America. At first the Indians received the 
newcomers with confidence and hospitality. Some of the The Indians 
colonists tried to keep this early friendship of the Indians by ^.^^^ 
treating them Idndly and justly. So many of the settlers, 
however, acted in such a selfish, reckless, and brutal way 
toward the Indians that their early confidence in the white 
men soon turned to distrust, and this distrust quickly grew 
into bitter hatred. The Indians were cruel and barbarous by 
nature, and when they made war, women and children as well 
as fighting men fell under their merciless tomahawks. The 
white men soon came to fear and to loathe their savage neigh- 
bors, and in many instances to wage war upon them after the 
Indian fashion. 



48 GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES 

In nearly all the colonies the people suffered more or less 

from Indian attacks. In 1G22 the Virginia Indians, while pre- 

Indian wars tending to be friendly, formed a plot to exterminate the settlers. 

in Virginia ^^^ attack was made upon all the settlements in the colony 

on the same day, and before the sun went down three hundred 

and forty-seven persons were slain. After beating off the first 

attack of the savages, the settlers arose in mass and hunted 

down the Indians in all quarters, kilhng many of them. In 1644 

Virginia again suffered greatly from a similar Indian uprising. 

The first settlers in the Connecticut valley had hardly 

built their log cabins before they were forced to fight for their 

King Philip's lives with the warlike 

War ,,,;;^-yi V s.^:-- •',- Pequots. But King Philip's 

War was the most dreadful 
Indian uprising that the 
Puritan colonists ever faced. 
Philip was the son of Mas- 
sasoit, the chief of the Pok- 
anokets, whohad been a firm 
friend of the Pilgrim Fathers 
at Plymouth. After his 
father's death, Philip plot- 
->^^ ^ ^ I ^^^ ^^'^ tlie other tribes of 

^ Early Virginians^ttacked by Indians NeW England tO drive the 

English out of the land. 
In the summer of 1675 the blow fell. Town after town was 
attacked and many settlers were killed. The situation was 
desperate, and for a time it looked as if the Indians might 
succeed in their purpose. But the Puritans were stout fighters, 
and in some instances the frontier towns beat off the attacks 
upon them. In the following winter, Massachusetts, Plymouth, 
and Connecticut sent a force of a thousand men against the 
chief town of the Indians, which stood in the middle of a great 
swamp. In a fierce and bloody battle the white men stormed 
and burned this town and slew more than a thousand of the 
Indians. This great swamp fight broke the power of the 
Indians, but they kept up the hopeless struggle for six months 
longer. By the end of that time King Philip and most of his 
followers were killed, and the few Indians who survived were 
captured and sold into slavery in the West Indies. 




INCREASE OF INDUSTRIES 



49 




Indian wars were by no means confined to Virginia and 
New England. Both the Dutch on the Hudson and the settlers 
in Carolina suffered from repeated Indian attacks. In Penn- Other Indian 
sylvania, WilUam Penn made a famous treaty of friendship with troubles 
the Indians which was "never sworn to and never broken." 
The kindness and justice of the Quakers, together with the fact 
that the Indian neighbors of the Quakers feared the Iroquois 
who were the friends of the 
English, saved eastern Penn- 
sylvania from the horrors of 
Indian warfare. But the 
frontiersmen of central 
Pennsylvania, as well as the 
settlers on the northern 
borders of New York and 
New England, suffered fear- 
fully at the hands of the 
Indians during the wars 
with the French and Indians 

and in the Revolution Attack on the Nan-agansetts' Stronghold, 1675 

The Growth of Industries. — The first need of the early 
settlers in America was for food, clothing, and shelter. This 
need made nearly all of them farmers, since most of the Most 
necessities of life come from the soil. Agriculture continued to colonists 
be the chief occupation of the colonists throughout the colonial farmers 
period of our history. Indeed, except in New England and 
New York, it was almost the only occupation. 

A writer of colonial times tells us how a strong and in- 
dustrious man with very little property except a gun, some 
powder and shot, and a few tools, could win a home for his The making 
family in the wilderness of America. Spealdng of the settlers of_^ colonial 
who were steadily occupying the lands of the colonies he says, 
"They maintain themselves the first year like the Indians, 
with their guns and nets, and afterward by the same means 
with the assistance of their lands. . . . The progress of 
their work is this: they fix upon the spot where they intend to 
build the house, and before they begin it, get ready a field for 
an orchard, planting it immediately with apples chiefly and 
some pears, cherries, and peaches. This they secure by an 
enclosure, then they plant a piece for the garden; and as 
4 



farm 



50 GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES 

soon as these works are done, they begin their house; some are 
built by the countrymen without any assistance, but these 
are generally very bad hovels; the common way is to agree 
with a carpenter and a mason for so many days' work, and 
the countryman to serve them as a laborer, which with a few 
irons and other articles he cannot make is the whole expense; 
many a house is built for less than £20 ($100). As soon as 
this work is over, which may be in a month or six weeks, he 
falls to work upon a field of corn, doing all the hard labor of 
it, and from not being able to buy horses, pays a neighbor for 
plowing it; perhaps he may be worth only a calf or two and a 
couple of young colts bought for cheapness; and he struggles 
with difficulties till these are grown; but when he has horses 

to work, and cows that give milk 
and calves, he is then made and 
on the road to plenty. It is sur- 
prising with how small a sum of 
money they will venture upon 
this course of settling; and it 
proves at the first mention how 
population must increase in a 

Early Colonists Building a House ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ 

means of a poor man's supporting his family: and in which, 
the larger the family, the easier the undertaking." 

The early colonists brought with them to America the 

seeds of the grains, vegetables, and fruits with which they 

Food plants were familiar in their European homes: wheat, oats, rye, barley, 

and domestic beans, peas, onions, cabbages, apples, peaches, pears, and 

anima s cherries. To these they soon ad(l(^d such native American 

plants as corn, potatoes, pumpkins, and tobacco. All our 

common domestic animals except the turkey — our horses, 

cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry — are likewise natives of Europe 

and were unknown on the western continent before the white 

men came. 

The colonists also brought such common tools as spades, 
noes, and axes from the Old World, and occasionally a plow 
Tools was imported, although most of the crude plows, harrows, 

and carts of colonial days were made in America. The most 
striking difference between farm life in colonial times and at 
the present clay is to be found in our wider use of machinery. 




THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRIES 



51 



Labor 



Our corn planters and grain drills, mowing machines, harvesters, 
and threshing machines, have taken the places of the hoes, 
scythes, sickles, and flails of our colonial ancestors. 

Unlike the farmers of to-day the colonists bought and sold 
little, but produced on their own farms nearly everything that 
their families needed. Each farm was usually small and was Farms and 
worked by the owner with the help of his sons. It is true that plantations 
there were many large plantations in the tobacco district of 
Virginia and in the rice swamps of South Carolina, but even 
in these colonies the small farms far outnumbered the great 
plantations. 

From the earliest colonial times there was a demand for a 
great deal of labor upon the tobacco and rice plantations of 
the South, and in 
all of the colonies 
some of the more 
prosperous Farmers 
found more work 
upon their farms 
than they and the 
members of their 
families could do. 
The demand for 
labor was met in 
part by bringing 
over poor people 
from England who 
were bound, or "indentured," to serve for a term of years, after 
which they were given their freedom, and in part by gradually 
introducing negro slaves from Africa. For some time the 
indentm-ed white servants were more numerous than the 
slaves, but in the later colonial period African slavery grew 
very rapidly. While there were negro slaves in all the colonies, 
there were far more of them in the South than in the North. 

Although, as we have said, nearly all the colonists were 
farmers, they and their wives and children were obliged to do 
a great many other kinds of work. The colonial farmer was Domestic 
usually his own carpenter and blacksmith and frequently his manufac- 
own tanner and shoemaker. The housewife always made ^^^^ 
such necessary articles as soap and candles. There was a 




An Example of an Old-time Plow 



52 



GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES 



spinning wh^el in every home, and the mother and daughters 
spun flax and wool into thread and yarn and often wove the 
cloth out of which they later made the clothing for the family. 
In fact, the colonial home was a factory in which was made 
nearly everything that the family needed and sometimes a few 
articles for sale. In many a New England farm house during 
the long winter evenings, while the women and girls were busy 
spinning and weaving, the men and boys made barrel staves, 
hoops, or shingles before the great fireplace in the kitchen. 
Staves and hoops found a ready market in the West Indies 
with which the New Englanders traded. 

With the exception of shipbuilding, which flourished in 
New England, manufacturing outside of the homes of the 
Other people grew very slowly in the colonies. There were a few local 
industries sawmills, gi'ist mills, and tanneries, and toward the latter part 
of the colonial era, mills for making cloth and shops where 
furnitm-e, brass and copper ware, and hats were manufactured. 
Iron ore was found in nearly all the colonies, and in time a few 
furnaces for smelting it were set up. The iron thus secured 
was wrought into tools, farming implements, household uten- 
sils, and hardware of various kinds. 

Notwithstanding all their efforts to make things for them- 
selves, the colonists were always dependent upon England for 
many manufactured articles. The ships which brought these 
English goods to America carried back to England the grain, 
lumber, and furs of the Northern Colonies, the tobacco of 
Maryland and Virginia, the tar, pitch, and turpentine of 
North Carolina, and the rice and indigo of South Carolina. 
New England also enjoyed a rich trade with the West Indies, 
where she exchanged her fish, salted meats, and barrel staves 
for molasses. A large part of the molasses thus brought to 
New England was made into rum. Slave traders exchanged 
this rum for captive negroes on the west coast of Africa and 
sold the negroes in the West Indies or to the planters in the 
colonies. 

The lack of money made it difficult to do business in the 
colonies as we carry it on today. Instead of buying and selling 
for money, the settlers frequently traded one article for another, 
as, for example, a pair of shoes for a coat or a cow for a horse. 
Such trading is called barter. There were a few English coins 



Colonial 
trade 



Money 



GOVERNMENT OF THE COLONIES 



53 




Pine-Tree Shilling. 



in America, and some Spanish silver pieces came into the 
colonies as a result of the 
commerce with the West 
Indies. Pine tree shillings 
were coined at a mint estab- 
lished in Massachusetts, in 
1652, and later some of 
the colonies issued paper 
money. 

The Government of the Colonies. — One of the first needs 
of each of the English colonies in America was a government 
to keep order among the people, to protect life and property, 
and to do the other useful and necessary things which our 
govermnents in township or city, county, state, and nation 
do for us today. Quite naturally, the early colonists tried to 
do these things as they were done in England in those days, 
but they soon found it necessary to change somewhat their 
English ideas about government and their English ways of 
managing affairs, in order to adapt them to the different condi- 
tions which existed in the new land to which they had come. 

In New England, where the colonists usually lived on 
small farms near the meeting houses which they attended, it 
was found most convenient for each neighborhood to look 
after its own affairs. Each little self-governing community 
■ was called a town or township. All the voters in each town 
met in an annual town meeting at whidi they elected officers 
to look after such matters as the care of stray animals, the 
making and repairing of roads, and the management of a 
school. The town meeting also decided how much money 
the town should raise by taxing its people and how it should 
spend the money thus secured. It also chose two men to repre- 
sent the town in the legislature or lawmaking body of the 
colony. 

In Virginia and the other southern colonies, where many 
of the colonists lived on large plantations, often considerable 
distances apart along the banks of the wide, deep rivers, the 
county was found to be the more convenient form of local 
government. The most important officers in the Virginia 
county were the sheriff and the justices of the peace. Instead 
of being elected by the people as the officers of the New England 



English ways 
of governing 
are set up in 
America 



Town 

government 
in New 
England 



County 
government 
in the South 



54 



GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES 



A mixed 
form in the 
middle 
colonies 



town were, the county officers in the South were generally 
appointed by the governor of the colony. The sheriff kept 
orcler in his county and collected the taxes. The justices of 

the peace held a court of quarter 
sessions, as it was called, because 
it usually met four times each 
year at the county court-house, 
at which they determined the 
amount of county tax, appointed 
persons to look after the care of 
the roads, and transacted any 
other necessary county business. 
In the middle colonies, New 
York, New Jersey, and Pennsyl- 
vania, a mixed form of local 
government including both the 
county and the township grew 
up. In these colonics part of 
i\\c work of managing local affairs 
was done by the comity and part 
of it by the township, and each 
had the power to levy its own 
taxes. Both the county and 
the township officers were gener- 
ally elected by the people. This 
mixed form of local govern- 
important to-day because it is in use 



opf^L. 




1 


kM 


*■ 




m 


1 


; 


W 




^? 


^ 



The 

government 
of the colony 



An Old-time Sheriff 



The 
legislature 



ment is especially 

in nearly all our western states. 

Each of the forty-eight states which now form the United 
States of America has its own state government. The govern- 
ments of all our states are very much ahke. In each state 
there is a legislature which makes the laws, a governor who 
enforces them, and courts whose judges tell what the laws 
mean and apply them to individual cases. Governments very 
much like those in our states to-day grew up in the colonies 
during the colonial period of our history. 

Each colony had its own legislature or lawmaking body. 
In every colony except P(mnsylvania this lawmaking body 
was made up of two houses, usually called the assembly and 
the council. The members of the assembly were chosen by 



BACON'S REBELLION 55 

the people, although in most of the colonies only those men 
who possessed a certain amount of property were allowed to 
vote. In a few instances the people also elected the councilors, 
but in most of the colonies the members of the council or upper 
house were appointed by the king upon the suggestion of the 
governor. In a general way the colonial assembly corresponded 
to the house of representatives in each of our present state 
legislatures, and the colonial council was the forerunner of the 
senate or upper house now found in every one of om' states. 

Each colony had a governor who enforced the law. In 
the charter colonies like Connecticut and Rhode Island the 
people elected their governor, and in Pennsylvania and Mary- The 
land; which were proprietary, the owner of the colony named governor 
the governor. Most of the colonics, however, sooner or later 
became royal provinces, and in them the governor was ap- 
pointed b}^ the king. The governor of a royal colony was the 
representative of the king, and had very much the same power 
in his province as the king possessed in the government of 
England. 

Some of the governors whom the king of England sent to 
rule over his colonies in America were good men who tried to 
govern wisely and justly. Many of them, however, were selfish Bad 
and greedy men who sought to regain in America the fortunes governors 
which they had lost in the mother country. Many of the 
actions of these unworthy royal governors were resented by the 
colonists and there were numerous disputes between such gov- 
ernors and the representatives of the people in the colonial 
assemblies. 

Governor Berkeley of Virginia is a good example of the 
colonial governor who put his own private interest before the 
welfare of the people whom he was sent to govern. In 1675 Bacon's 
the settlers on the Virginia frontier suffered fearfully from Rebellion 
Indian attacks, but Governor Berkeley would not send soldiers 
to protect the people and punish the Indians because he was 
making a great deal of money out of the fur trade with the 
Indians. At last a young planter named Nathaniel Bacon 
raised a force of volunteers, and without the governor's per- 
mission defeated the Indians and saved the frontier settlements 
from the tomahawk. Governor Berkeley was very angry. He 
said that Bacon was a rebel and a traitor. A civil war broke 



56 



GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES 



out between 
defeated the 




The Burning of Jamestown 
This town was never rebuilt. 



Bacon and Berkeley in which Bacon's rebels 
forces of the governor and burned Jamestown. 
Just at this moment of vic- 
tory Bacon died of a fever, 
and, without their leader, his 
men soon fell into the hands 
of Governor Berkeley, who 
put many of them to death. 
In spite of its bloody end 
Bacon's Rebellion proved 
that the Virginia colonists 
dared to resist an unjust 
governor. It was a fore- 
runner of the Revolution, 
which began just a century 
later. 

In 1686, James II, who was the most tyrannical of all the 
Stuart kings of England, united all New England, New York, 
The tyranny and New Jersey into one great province and sent over Sir 
of Andros Edmund Andros as its governor. The king authorized Andros 
to make laws and to tax the people without their consent. 
For two years Governor Andros ruled hke a tyrant. He took 
away the charter of Massachusetts and attempted to seize the 
charters of Connecticut and Rhode Island, but failed in both 
instances. In Connecticut the charter was saved by hiding 
it in a hollow tree, which has ever since been known as the 
Charter Oak. In 1688 the Enghsh people drove the tyrant, 
James II, from the country, and put his daughter Mary and her 
husband, William of Orange, upon the throne. When the 
people in Boston heard of this English Revolution, they threw 
Andros into prison and later sent him back to England. King 
William now gave Massachusetts a new charter, while Connecti- 
cut and Rhode Island continued to be governed as they were 
before the coming of Andros. 

Besides a lawmaldng body and a governor, each colony 
had courts very much as our states have now. Small cases were 
The courts tried l>y the justices of the peace, who were generally appointed 
by the governor. In each county there was a county court 
whose judges were appointed by the governor or, in some 
cases, elected by the assembly. The county court tried crim- 



COLONIES AND MOTHER COUNTRY 57 

inals and settled important disputes concerning property. In 
each colony there was also a high court to which appeals could 
be made from the county courts. These high courts were very 
much like our present state supreme courts. 

While England sometimes tried to interfere in the govern- 
ment of her American colonies, she let them alone, in the main, 
to manage their own political affairs very much as they pleased. Training in 
The experience and training which the colonists got in governing ^^^" 
themselves, in their townships, counties, and states, were very 
important in fitting them for the independence which they 
were to win at the close of the colonial period of our history. 

The Colonies and the Mother Country. — From the begin- 
ning, England looked upon the colonies as her children. She 
felt that they were planted by her care and that they ought English 
to honor and obey her. This English feeling was well expressed feeling 
by one of the royal governors of New York when he said, colonies 
"All these colonies, which are but twigs belonging to the main 
tree, ought to be kept entirely dependent upon and subservient 
to England." 

The English believed, as did all other people at that time, 
that nature had been generous to new countries whose natural 
resources were as yet untouched, and that colonists ought to 
share this bounty with their mother country. Accordingly, 
they looked to their American colonies to furnish them with 
food and raw materials which they needed, and to buy from 
them large quantities of manufactured goods. For example, 
they expected, the colonists to sell them such things as iron, 
wool, furs, and hides, and then to buy of them the steel, cloth- 
ing, hats, and shoes which they made out of these raw materials. 
The EngUsh did not want the colonists to sell to other nations 
any of their products which England desired, nor to buy else- 
where what they could buy in England, nor to manufacture at 
home any goods that would take the place of those the 
mother country had for sale. 

Very early the Parliament of England began to pass laws 
to carry into effect the idea that colonies exist for the benefit 
of the mother country. In 16C0 it declared that all trade with The 
the colonies must be carried on in English or colonial ships. Navigation 
The same law provided that such colonial products as sugar, 
tobacco, cotton, indigo, ginger, and dyeing woods must be 



58 GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES 

shipped to England or to another English colony. Grain, salt 
provisions, fish, and rum were not included in this list and the 
colonists could sell them anywhere. 

A few years later the colonists were forbidden to import 
European goods, with a few exceptions, from any other country 
than England. At the same time it was ordered that colonial 
products Which paid a duty in England should pay a similar 
duty when shipped from one English colony to another. Still 
later, rice, molasses, and naval stores were added to the long 
list of articles which the colonists could sell only in England. 
In 1733 very heavy duties were placed upon molasses and 
sugar brought to the colonies from the Spanish and French 
West Indies, for the purpose of forcing the colonists to buy 
these commodities at a higher price in the British West Indies. 
These laws and many others like them, which were passed 
to compel the people of the colonies to buy and sell in England 
so that English manufacturers, merchants, and shipowners 
■could make a profit from their trade, are called the Navigation 
Acts. England had no thought of oppressing her colonists by 
passing these trade laws. Such regulation of trade was in line 
with the best thought of the seventeenth century, and all 
colonizing countries had similar laws upon their statute books. 
England also tried to make the colonists dependent upon 
her for an ever-increasing share of the manufactured goods 
Colonial which they needed, by restricting or prohibiting manufactories 

manufactur- j^ America. In 1699 the people in each colony were forbidden 
to export yarn and woolen cloth "to any other place whatso- 
ever." Later, hats were added to this list. At last, in 1750, 
the building of any more mills or forges for the manufacture of 
iron or steel was absolutely prohibited. While thus discouraging 
manufacture in her colonies, England encouraged them to 
produce the raw materials, such as pig iron, indigo, flax, hemp, 
timber, tar, and pitch, which the mother country used in her 
own manufactures. 

The I<]nglish settlers in America always resented the idea 

that the colonies existed for the benefit of the mother country. 

The colonists They had come to the new world at their own expense and 

resent and they insisted that they lost none of their rights as Englishmen 

acts of trade when they became colonists. They believed that they had as 

much right to trade with any part of the world as had the 



COLONISTS AND MOTHER COUNTRY 



59 



Englishmen who remained at liome. With this beUef the 
colonists declared that the Navigation Acts were unjust, and 
they disobeyed these English laws of trade at every oppor- 
tunity. 

The Enghsh officers in the colonies found it impossible 
to enforce the Navigation Acts. In fact, during most of the 
colonial period they did not try seriously to enforce them. 
Along with the lawful trade in fish, salt beef, pork, and grain, 




"It Was Impossible to Enforce the Navigation Acts" 
This picture shows a mob tarring and feathering an excise officer who tried to enforce 
the acts of trade. 

which was carried on between the colonies and the West Indies, 
there sprang up an illegal but very profitable trade with those 
islands as well as with other parts of the world. The efforts 
of the English government to stop this illegal trade, or smuggling, 
and to enforce the Navigation Acts just at the close of the 
colonial period, were the foremost causes of the Revolution 
in which the colonies declared their independence of England. 



REFERENCES. 

Thwaites, The Colonies; Lodge, A Short History of the English 
Colonies in America; Andrews, Colonial Self-Government; Greene, Pro- 



60 GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH COLONIES 

vincial America; Chaiming, History of the United States, Yol. 11; Bogart, 
Economic History of the United States; Coman, Industrial History of 
the United States. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. Indian Wars in the Carolinas. Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neigh- 
bors, II, 298-306. 

2. King Philip's War. Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, 199- 
241. 

3. The Colonial Farmer. Bogart, Economic History of the United 
States, 38-50. 

4. The Commerce of the Colonies. Coman, Industrial History of 
the United States, 72-83. 

5. The New England Township. Fiske, Civil Government of the 
United States, 16-32. 

6. The Old Virginia County. Fiske, Civil Government of the United 
States, 57-67. 

7. The Colonial Governments. Fiske, Civil Government of the United 
States, 140-159. 

8. Bacon's Rebellion. Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, II, 
45-107. 

9. The Tyranny of Sir Edmund Andros. Fiske, The Beginnings of 
Neiv England, 242-278. 

10. The Story of Jacob Leisler. Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies, 
II, 183-208. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Stories: Hawthorne, Grandfather^ s Chair; John Bennett, Barnahy 
Lee; Brooks, In Leisler' s Times; Cooper, T/te Last of the Mohicans; Stim- 
son. King Noanett; Goodwin, White Aprons; Cooke, Stories of the Old 
Dominion; Seton, Charter Oak; Brooks, The Story of New York; Walton 
and Brumbaugh, Stories of Pennsylvania. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. What important event happened in England in 1640? In 1660? 
In 1688? Show how each of these events influenced the history of the 
English colonies in America. 

2. Did the land in America belong to the Indians? Was it right for 
the white men to settle in America without the consent of the Indians? 
Could the wars between the early settlers and the Indians have been 
avoided? 

3. How did life on a colonial farm differ from farm life today? Write 



REFERENCES 61 

a list of the things now made in factories wliich the colonists manufactured 
in their homes. 

4. How does the difference between the geography of New England 
and that of the southern colonies help to explain the differences in the local 
government of these sections? Which of the three forms of local govern- 
ment described in this chapter prevails in the state in which you live? 

5. Were the Navigation Acts wise laws? Why? Was it wrong for 
the colonists to disobey these laws? Why? 



CHAPTER IV 



Our Colonial Ancestors 



The Europeans Who Became Colonists. — The greater part 

of the inhabitants of tlie colonies, whose beginnings and growth 

People from we have been studying, were of Enghsh origin. But we must 

many lands jjq^ think that all the early settlers in the English colonies in 

came to ./ o 

America America came from England. Great numbers of them looked 

back to the other countries of the British Islands — to Scotland, 

Wales, and Ireland — as their Old-World homes. Many others 




Quakers 

Of PEMMSYLVAMIA 

came from Germany. The sons of Holland, Sweden, and 
France also played important parts in planting the settlements 
which were to grow into the United States of America. All 
these European peoples were our ancestors. 

The settlers who came from England, however, were not 
only far more nunierous than those from any other European 
The English country, they were also more widely scattered throughout the 
colonies. Most of the early Virginians, nearly all the Puritans 
who came to New England, and the greater part of the Quakers 
settled in New Jersey and Pennsylvania were natives of England. 
In all the other colonies the English element in the population 
was very large. The colonists of English birth and their 
descendants have had a far greater part in the making of 

62 



EUROPEANS WHO BECAME COLONISTS 63 

America than the men of any other race. John Smith, Wilham 
Bradford, John Winthrop, Roger Wilhams, Thomas Hooker, 
Wilham Penn, and James Oglethorpe were all Englishmen. 

The nmnber of Dutch and Swedish settlers in the valleys 
of the Hudson and the Delaware was not large, but they had a 
marked influence upon the histoiy and life of those regions. The Dutch 
The Van Rensselacrs, the Schuylers. and other famihes ^^ Swedes 
descended from the early Dutch immigrants, have played a 
great part in the making of the state of New York. There are 
many people in Delaware, southern New Jersey, and south- 
eastern Pennsylvania who can trace their ancestry back to the 
Swedes who colonized in that section. 

Toward the close of the seventeenth century, after nearly 
all the English colonies were founded, many Huguenots, or 
French Protestants, came to America. These people fled to The French 
the new world to escape a terrible religious persecution in then* 
own land. They settled in many of the colonies, but there 
were more of them in South Carolina than anywhere else. 
Among the descendants of these French settlers there are many 
men who have been famous in our history. 

Soon after 1700 a steady stream of German immigrants 
began to come to the American colonies. This German stream 
continued to flow westward throughout the remainder of the The 
colonial period of our history. Religious persecution, the hope Germans 
of bettering their condition in life, and, in the case of the large 
number who came from the Rhine valley, the desire to escape 
from a land wasted by war, were the causes of the great German 
migration to the American colonies. 

Some of the first comers from Germany settled in the 
Mohawk Valley in New York, but the great majority of the 
Germans who came to America in the eighteenth century 
made their homes in Pennsylvania where they occupied whole , 
counties. Soon some of the Germans who came to Pennsyl- 
vania, and their descendants, began to move into the interior 
of the country toward the southwest, and in the course of 
time there were large numbers of them in western Maryland, 
Virginia, and North Carolina. Companies of German pioneers 
also came direct from their fatherland to the Carolinas and 
Georgia. 

The Germans in Pennsylvania lived by themselves and 



64 



OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS 



The Scotch- 
Irish 



kept their own language and customs, as their descendants 
continue to do to this day in some sections of that state. They 
were a hard-working and thrifty race. They settled upon some 
of the best land in America, and in time they came to be the 
best farmers in the colonies. An eighteenth century writer 
who knew the Pennsylvania German farmers well, speaks of 

their "extensive fields of 
grain, full fed herds, lux- 
urious meadows, orchards 
promising loads of fruit, 
together with spacious 
barns and commodious 
stone dwelhng houses." 

The Scotch-Irish were 
another important ele- 
ment in the population 
of the colonies. They 
were the descendants of 
Scotch people who had 
settled in the north of 
Ireland in the early part 
of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. These settlers, like 
most of the Scotch, were 
Presbyterians in religion. 
About a century after 
they went to Uve in 
Ireland, petty religious 
persecution andthehcavy 
taxes laid upon them by 
the English government 
drove large numbers of 
these Scotch-Irishmen to 
America. A few of them settled in New England, many made 
their way to the southern colonies, but probably the largest 
number found homes in Pennsylvania. 

The Scotch-Irish settlers were among the later immigrants 
to the colonies and most of them pushed on beyond the districts 
near the coast, which were already settled, to the frontier where 
it was still easy to get land. The Scotch-Irish were a bold 




WHAT THE COLONISTS BROUGHT 65 

and hardy race of men who loved the free Hfe of the border. 
They furnished a large proportion of the pioneers who won the 
colonial frontier from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas from the 
Indians and the wilderness, and then led the way over the 
Alleghany Mountains into the valley of the Mississippi. 

Besides the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians there were many 
Roman Catholic Irish in Maryland and Pennsylvania and a 
few of them in nearly every one of the other colonies. Then, Irish, Scotcn, 
too, thousands of Scotch came direct from Scotland to the and Welsh 
American colonies. They were especially numerous in North 
Carolina. Such Welsh names as Gwynedd, Bryn Mawr, and 
Tredyffrin, all places in Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, suggest 
the home land of the founders of these settlements. 

What the Colonists Brought from Europe to America. — 
The men who colonized America brought with them to the 
new world the civilization of the Old-World lands from which The colonists 
they came. They could not leave behind them their own ^o"i^^4a^s' 
traits of character nor the ideas, customs, and beliefs which of living and 
they had'inherited from their ancestors. It was just as natural thinking with 
for them to set up in the colonies the social and political insti- *^®™- 
tutions which they had known at home. We have aheady 
seen how they also brought with them the seeds of their indus- 
trial life, the grams, fruits, domestic animals, arts, and crafts 
of their old homes. Life in America, as we know it, was planted 
here by our European ancestors and has grown from what they 
brought with them from Europe. But American life has 
become somewhat different from life in Europe because of the 
new conditions which our European ancestors found in 
America. 

The various i-aces which colonized in the United States 
had many common characteristics, yet each possessed its own 
peculiar traits, and all these traits have helped to make the EngUsh 
American people what they now are. In the making of Ameri- f^j^'^J^* g*^' 
cans the influence of the English has been far greater than that and law ' 
of any other race. The colonists from England were a strong, 
brave, and enterprising people, fond of outdoor life, industrious, 
shrewd in business, and very tenacious of purpose. The Enghsh 
brought to America our language, our laws, and our forms of 
government. 

In most respects the early Dutch and Swedish settlers 
5 



66 



OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS 



French 
intelligence 
ard skill 



German 
industry and 
thrift 



Scotch-Irish 
energy and 
love of 
liberty 



Ideas of 
industry 



upon the Hudson and the Delaware strongly resembled the 
English. Many of the Dutch were traders or merchants, while, 
as a rule, the Swedes were sturdy farmers. 

The French Huguenots were a particularly desirable class 
of settlers and, in proportion to their numbers, they added a 
very great contribution to the making of our country. Nearly 
all of them came from the cities of France, where they were 
skilled workmen, merchants, or scholars. They brought wdth 
them to the new world their habits of industry, their keen 
intelligence, and their upright character. They have furnished 
a large number of leaders in every department of life in America. 
The Germans who came to the colonies in such large 
numbers during the eighteenth century were a quiet, hard- 
working, frugal and thrifty race. They were very poor when 
they arrived in America, but then- industrious habits soon 
brought them prosperity. T^hey were a very religious people, 
honest in their dealings and contented in spirit. As we have 
seen, they wished to remain German and consequently they 
clung tenaciously to the customs, language, and literature of 
their fatherland. 

There could hardly be a greater contrast than that between 
the plodding and peaceful Germans and the stern, aggressive, 
warlike Scotch-Irish, who came about the same time, and 
settled in the same parts of the country. The Scotch-Irish 
were a rugged and hardy race — energetic steadfast, and liberty- 
loving. They were famous Indian fighters and did much to 

win the western lands 
from the redmen. The 
Scotch-Irish were a religious 
people and strong believers 
in education, which they did 
much to foster in the colo- 
nies. Next to the English, 
they have probably had a 
greater influence upon 
America than any other race 
element in its population. 

Besides these charac- 
teristics of their various 
ra('(^s, our colonial ancestors Ijiought with them to America a 




Colonial Spinning Wheel and Loom 



WHAT THE COLONISTS BROUGHT 



67 



superstitions 



knowledge of the ways of making a living which prevailed in 
their old homes across the sea. Along with the common food 
plants, the domestic animals, and the simple farming tools of the 
old world, they brought a knowledge of the arts and crafts of 
their time. They could saw lumber, build houses and ships, 
make bricks, tan leather, spin and weave both flax and wool, 
and make a great many other things which were necessities 
then as now in every home. 

Our colonial ancestors brought with them to America their 
ways of thinking, their opinions, and their prejudices. Many ^Pi"i.°"t.^^^ 
of their beliefs seem very 
superstitious to us. When 
the colonies were estab- 
lished, nearl}?^ all people still 
beheved that the sun, the 
moon, and the stars revolve 
around the earth. These 
heavenly bodies were 
thought to exert great in- 
fluence upon affairs. The 
right time to plant potatoes, 
to cut timber, to kill pigs, 
to cut hair, to take med- 
icine, and to do many other 
things, was determined by 
the phases of the moon. 
Any unusual appearance in 
the sky, like a comet, was 
thought to be a sure sign of some coming disaster hke pesti- 
lence or war. 

The invisible world was a very real world to the colonists. 
They thought that angels and devils were all about them. 
There was a haunted house in nearly every community, and Witchcraft 
most people lived in fear of ghosts. The belief in witchcraft 
was as common in the colonies as it had long been in Europe. 
A witch was a person, usually an old woman, who was believed 
to have sold her soul to Satan in exchange for the power 
to do all sorts of harmful things. When butter would not 
come in the churn, or when pigs or cattle were sick, it was 
thought to be the work of witches. 




A Trial for Witchcraft 



68 



OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS 



The Salem 
delusion 



Ideals and 
character 



English 
ideas of 
government 
and law 
prevail in 
America 



In the European countries from which the colonists came 
witchcraft had long been punished by death, and it is not strange 
that the early American settlers should inflict the same penalty 
upon those they thought to be in league with the ^il one. 
Sometimes a whole community would be thrown into the most 
unreasonable excitement about the work of witches. The 
worst instance of such foolish agitation was in Salem, Massa- 
chusetts, in 1692, where twenty persons were executed for 
witchcraft and many others thrown into jail. In a short time 
the excitement passed away and the prisoners were released. 
When the people of Salem came to think soberly about what 
they had done many of them were sincerely repentant. Since 
the famous Salem delusion there has never been an execution 
for witchcraft in our country. 

Along with these mistaken ideas and silly superstitions, the 
colonists brought some of the finest thoughts and noblest 
ideals of the world. Many of them dared the stormy Atlantic 
because 

"They sought a faith's pure shrine" 

The splendid literature of England, the highest standards of 
conduct and character of their time, and the purest Christian 
faith and life were the priceless possessions of many of our 
earliest American ancestors. 

Many of the social and political institutions of England 
were transplanted to America by the English settlers and, in 

time, adopted by the col- 
onists who came from other 
lands. Local self-govern- 
ment, the right to be repre- 
sented in the law-making 
body, and trial by jury for 
those accused of crime, all 
came to America from Eng- 
land very early in colonial 
history. With English laws 
there came many cruel pun- 
ishments which were then common in the mother country. 
The stocks, the pillory, and the whipping post were set up in 
America just as they existed in England in the seventeenth 
century. Such old English punishments as cropping the ears or 




Pillory and Stocks for Punishment of Offenders 



WHAT THE COLONISTS FOUND 69 

branding the hand with a hot iron were not unknown in the 
colonies. Sometimes drunkards were compelled to wear a red 
letter "D" about their necks. In some of the colonies, women 
were punished for scolding or slander by binding them to an 
iron seat called the ducking stool and dipping them in the water. 
All these cruel punishments have passed away, but our laws for 
the protection of life and property still rest upon the conomon. 
law of England which our ancestors brought to America. 

What the Colonists Found in the New World. — The history 
of our country has been influenced quite as much by the con- 
ditions and opportunities which our forefathers found in Weareinflu- 

America as it has been bv the ideas and wavs of doing things ®"<^f ° "y ^^^ 

. 6nvironin6nt 
which they brought with them from Europe. The location, 

the natural resources, and the climate of any country have a 

very great influence upon the lives of its people. Their health, 

their ways of making a living, their successes and their failures 

largely depend upon the geographical features of the land in 

which they live. We have just read about the heritage which 

our ancestors brought with them to the New World. It is no 

less important to inquire about what kind of country they found 

upon the western shore of the Atlantic. 

To the early colonists at Jamestown and Plymouth, America 
must have se(?med a dreadful wilderness filled with peril of all 
sorts. They soon found out that its dangers and hardships Perils of the 
were real enough. But more slowly the first American pioneers wilderness 
came to realize that they had taken possession of the coast of 
a vast continent with an almost infinite variety of natural 
resources. 

During the entire colonial period the settlements were 
confined to the Atlantic seaboard lying between the coast and 
the Appalachian mountain system. Yet even in this region, Resources of 
so small in comparison with the vast Mississippi Valley beyond geaboarT "^ 
the mountains, almost every kind of soil and climate was 
found. When white men first saw it, the eastern part of the 
United States was covered with a dense forest. The North 
was the home of the white pine from which most of our lumber 
has come, from colonial days almost to the present time. The 
yellow pine was the most important tree in the southern forests. 
The oak, chestnut, hickory, maple, and many other fine trees 
were widely distributed throughout the colonies. Some of the 



70 



OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS 




land on the Atlantic seaboard was unfit for cultivation, but 
much of it was very fertile, and after the forest was cleared 
away it produced in abundance the grains, vegetables, and 
fruits of Europe as well as the native American plants, tobacco 
and Indian corn. 

It was early discovered that the wide, lazily flowing rivers 
The rivers of the southern colonies were splendid roads leading into the 

interior of the country, and 
as a consequence, the settle- 
ments spread naturally 
along these waterways. 
The shorter and more rapid 
streams of New England 
furnished abundant water 
power to turn the wheels of 
the sawmills and grist mills 
of that section, and in this 
way thev helped to deter- 

An Early Colonial Sawmill ^-^^ ^^^ locatiou of the 

towns that grew up near somie of these mills. 

Beneath the surface of the land there lay hidden a mineral 
wealth of which the early colonists never dreamed, but whose 
later development was to play a very important part in the 
making of our country. In the course of time it was found that 
the colonies were rich in iron ore and in coal. Building stone, 
clay for making brick, sand for glass, and slate for roofing were 
found in many places, and limestone and cement rock were 
abundant. Some of these natural resources were not developed 
until long after the close of the colonial period. 

From the first the deer, bear, wild fowl, and other game 
which the colonists found in America, furnished an important 
Game fur part of their supply of food, but the turkey is the only one of 
and fish these animals which has ever been domesticated. Even more 
valuable than the wild game were such fur-bearing animals as 
the mink, the sable, and especially the beaver. Trapping and 
fur trading were important industries in early colonial history. 
In most places our American game and fur-bearing animals have 
been exterminated or are preserved in small numbers to-day 
under the protection of strict game laws. But the herring, 
mackerel, cod, shad, and other fish which the first settlers 



Mineral 
wealth 



HOMES OF THE COLONISTS 71 

found in great numbers along the Atlantic coast, still furnish a 
considerable part of our food supply. 

The climate of a country is no less important than the 
fertility of its soil in its influence upon the lives of the people. 
Indeed, without the proper degree of heat and an adequate The 
supply of moisture to make plants grow, a fertile soil is of little influence of 
value. Scarcely less important is the effect of climate and 
other geographical conditions upon the health of the people. 
The settlers in a low, wet, swampy region where mosquitoes 
abound are certain to suffer much from malaria and fevers. 
This fact explains in part the fearful suffering and high death 
rate among the early colonists in Virginia. 

The first European settlers upon our Atlantic Coast found 
a temperate climate with an abundant rainfall. They found, 
however, great diversity of temperature as well as of natural 
resources in the long stretch of country between Maine and 
Georgia. Partly beca\ise of this diversity the northern and 
southern colonists came to differ widely in their occupations, 
their interests, and their mode of life. 

When our European ancestors came to America they faced 
the gigantic task of sul)duing a vast wilderness and fitting it 
for the home of civilized man. In working out this task they Life in the 
cleared away the forests, cultivated the land, built houses, ^^^ World 
roads, and cities, and began to develop the rich natural resources Americans 
of a continent. This conquest of nature has been attended by of the 
privation, hardships without number, and unceasing toil, colomsts 
But the work of winning a continent from the wilderness has 
changed our Eiu'opean forefathers into the bold, energetic, 
self-i-eliant, persevering American people. 

The colonists found what they sought in the New World. 
Those who were led across the Atlantic by love of adventure 
found it in full measure. Those who came to better their con- 
dition of life won homes in a land of plenty. Those who were 
driven out of their fatherlands by tyranny and oppression 
found liberty. Those who fled from religious persecution found 
freedom to worship God. 

The Homes of the Colonists. — A house in which to live 
was one of the first needs of the early colonist. It was not easy 
to supply this need, in spite of the fact that the finest timber, homes^f^the 
clay, and building stone were near at hand, for these newcomers settlers 



72 



OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS 



The colonial 
house 



had neither sawmills, brick kilns, nor stone cutters. At first 
many of the pioneers took refuge in caves dug in a river 
bank or in wigwams like those of the Indians. Such shelter, 
however, was only temporary. With his trusty axe the 
settler soon cut logs and with the help of his neighbors built 
a cabin. 

The first log cabins were rude affairs, little more than huts 
or hovels. In time, larger and more comfortable houses were 
built with the cracks between the logs "chinked" with wedges 
of wood and daubed with clay to keep them warm and dry. 
There was no glass in the windows, which were closed with 

shutters to keep out the 
rain. The rough door was 
hung with strips of leather 
or on wooden hinges. The 
roof was covered with bark 
shingles and the floor was 
made of puncheons, which 
were split logs smoothed off 
on the face with the axe. 

As the colonies grew 
and throve, the . log house 
gave place to a larger and 
more convenient dwelling 
of wood, brick, or stone. 
The typical small farm- 
house of colonial days was 
of one story, with two 
rooms, a kitchen which was 
the living room of the family, and a bedroom with one or more 
beds and a trundle-bed. The older children slept in a garret, 
to which they climbed by means of a ladder. Many of these 
smaller houses were neither lathed nor plastered, and had oiled 
paper instead of glass in the windows. Some of the more pros- 
perous farmers and planters built larger houses with plastered 
walls and glass windows. A few of these comfortable old colonial 
houses, with their heavy oak timbers, low rooms, great fire- 
places, and massive stone chimneys, still stand, gray and weather- 
beaten, but as firm and solid as ever. In the later colonial 
.days the wealthy planters of Virginia and some of the rich 




A Log Cabin on the Frontier 



The First Thanksgiving at Pl^tviouth — 1621 
After they had gathered their first harvest in America in 1621, 
tlie Pilgrim Fatliers set aside a time for thanksgiving and rejoicing. 
Their Indian friends visited them and for three days they all feasted 
upon hasty pudding, clam chowder, wild fowl, and venison. It is 
said that one of the Indians brought .something like a bushel of 
popi^ed corn, a dainty hitherto unknown to the Pilgrims. 



HOMES OF THE COLONISTS 



73 




merchants of Boston and Philadelphia lived in splendid man- 
sions with handsome staircases and many spacious rooms. 

The houses of the colonists, from the plainest log cabins 
to the finest mansions, were without most of the comforts and 
conveniences found in nearly all our homes today. Our Lack of con- 
modern ways of heating our houses by steam, hot water, hot veniences 
air furnaces or stoves, were unknown. All the warmth and 
much of the light in the colonial home came from the great 
fireplace in the kitchen, the 
most cheerful and homelike 
room in the house. A few 
of the larger houses had 
fireplaces in other rooms. 
At first the settlers used 
torches made of blazing pine 
knots for lighting purposes. 
Later, candles and lamps in 
which whale oil was burned, 
came into use. The water 
supply of the household was 
carried in buckets from the 
nearest spring or well. 

The windows of the colonial house were small, its walls 
were bare, and its uncarpeted floor was often strewn with 
rushes or sand. Except in the homes of the rich, the furnitm-e Furniture 
was plain and scanty. The table, chairs, and benches were ajid utensils 
homemade. The table was set with pewter platters, wooden 
plates, wooden or pewter spoons, and cups of wood or leather. 
There were no forks, no saucers, no glass, and very httle china. 
In the houses of the wealthy there was fine furniture from Eng- 
land, and silverware shone on great sideboards of pohshed 
mahogany. 

The clothing of the colonists, hke most of the furniture in 
their homes, was plain and strong. It was made of coarse linen 
and heavy woolen cloth woven by the women from home-grown Clothing 
flax and wool. Often the men wore deerskin or sheepskin 
breeches. The clothing of the masses of the people was neat 
and clean but never showy. But the few rich who could 
afford it, made a great display in their dress. The men wore 
broadcloth and velvet, lace ruffles, silk stockings, and shoes 



The Chew House 
A colonial mansion in Germantown, Philadelphia. 



74 



OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS 



Food and 
drink 



The old-time 
fireplace 



with silver buckles, and the women dressed even more extrava- 
gantly in silks and l)roeades. 

The food of our colonial forefathers was coarse but abun- 
dant. Wild game, fish, beef, and pork were plentiful. The 
fields of corn supplied delicious roasting ears, corn bread, and 
hominy. Some wheat and rye were grown. Beans, pumpkins, 
and squashes were an important part of the food supply. The 
orchards were full of apples, pears, and peaches. The cows 
supplied milk, butter, and cheese. Sugar and molasses, imported 
from the West Indies, were supplemented by wild honey and 
maple sugar. Tea and coffee were not brought to America 
until long after the first colonies were settled. Hard cider, 
rum, and, in the South, peach brandy were common drinks, 
and there was much shameful drunkenness. 

The food of the colonists was cooked in a pot hung over the 
fii'c in the great kitchen fireplace, or roasted on a spit, or baked 

in an oven before it. This 
fireplace, with its great 
oak backlog, with the rifle 
and powderhorn hanging 
above it, and with the 
spinning wheel standing 
by its side, was the real 
heart of the old-time home. 
In his famous poem, 
"Snow Bound," Whittier 
tells us of the homely 
contentment of the old- 
time family as all its 
members gathered before 
the hearth-fire's ruddy glow on a cold winter evening: 




A Colonial Kitchen Showing Household 
Implements in General Use 



hearth-fire's ruddy glow on a 

"Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the north wind roar 
In baffled rage at i)anc and door, 
While the red logs before us beat 
The frost line back witli tropic heat; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
The merrier up its roaring draught 
The great throat of the chimney laughed, 



THEIR SOCIAL ENJOYMENTS 



75 



The house dog, on his paws outspread, 
Laid to the fu-e his drowsy head, 
Tlie cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; 
And, for the winter fireside meet, 
Between the andiron's straddling feet 
The mug of cider simmered slow, 
And apples sputtered in a row. 
And, close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's w^ood. 
^Mlat matter how the night behaved? 
What matter how the north wind raved? 
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench our hearthfire's ruddy glow." 




A Fox Hunting Scene in Colonial Virginia 
Young Washington and his friend, Lord Fairfax, are following the hounds. 

Social Life in Colonial Days. — During the colonial period 
of our history, very few people either in Europe or America 
believed that all men are created equal.. In all the colonies Differences 
distinct social classes existed, and differences in rank were ^" ^^°^ 
recognized by everybody. There were at least four distinct 
social groups. At the top were the aristocratic people: the ^j^^ 
great planters of the South, the patroons of New York, the aristocrats 



76 



OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS 



The middle 
class 



"old families" of New England, and the wealthy landowners 
of the middle colonies. The members of this upper class were 
the most highly educated and held most of the offices. They 
were much respected by all and possessed very great influence. 
The mass of the people belonged to the large middle class 
of farmers and tradesmen. In the South the farmers usually 
owned a few slaves who did most of the work on their farms, 
but in the northern colonies all the members of this class worked, 
and worked hard. Except in New England the men of the 
middle class had very little education. They were often rude and 
rough, but they were always brave, sturdy, and liberty-loving. 




Sedan Chairs 
The taxicabs of colonial days. 

The lower class was made up of the indentured white 
servants and their thriftless descendants who were called "poor 
The lower whites" in the South. While some of these servants were men 
classes of force and character, who became prosperous after winning 

their freedom, a groat many of them were of very inferior 
quality, convicts sent over from the mother country, and 
paupers from the slums of English cities. Sharply marked off 
from the poor whites, by the line of color, were the negro slaves, 
the lowest social class of all. 

We have already S(K^n that a vast majority of the colon- 
ists were farmers. There was a much smaller number of mechan- 
Occupations ics, merchants, sailors, and fishermen. At first there were few 



THEIR PROFESSIONS AND PLEASURES 



77 



doctors and no lawyers at all. The members of the legal pro- 
fession did not occupy a place of importance in American life 
until just before the Revolution, in which they played a promi- 
nent part. The colonial physicians had very little medical 
knowledge or surgical skill. They were "herb-doctors" and 
"blood-letters," and depended upon all sorts of silly nostrums 
to cure diseases. 

The colonists eagerly welcomed every diversion from the 
constant round of daily toil 
which filled their lives. 
House raisings, husking and 
quilting bees were pleasant 
social occasions to all the 
people of a neighborhood. 
The work at one of these 
bees was always followed by 
an ample dinner at which 
there was likely to be hard 
drinking. Weddings were 
times of feasting and excite- 
ment and often of much 
rough horseplay. Even the 
funerals were occasions of 
feasting and, too often, of 
drunkenness. 

The Puritans were op- 
posed to the popular amuse- 
ments of their time, but out- 
side of New England the 
colonists Ijrought to America 
the horse-racing, gambling, 
bull-baiting, cock-fighting, wrestling, and other rough and 
brutal sports which were common in England in the seventeenth 
century. Picnics and dancing parties were favorite diversions 
in the middle and southern colonies. Skating and sleighing 
came from Holland with the early Dutch settlers. In all the 
colonies the people enjoyed the finest hunting and fishing 
almost at their doors. 

The colonist seldom traveled far from home, and when 
necessity forced him to go on a journey he found it a serious 




Amusements 



A Colonial Chaise and Outrider 
Such carriages were used by the rich. 



78 



OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS 



- ^ ^«-»>-%^ 



Travel undertaking. At first nearly all travel was by water. Boats 

were used in passing to and from such large coast towns as 
Boston, Plymouth, and Salem; and between settlements and 
plantations upon rivers like the Hudson, the Delaware, the 
Potomac, and the James. The Indian trails, as the narrow 
footpaths, made by the red men were called, were the earliest 
roads. At first the roads were mere bridle paths and all travel 

over them was on foot or horse- 
back. Pack horses were used 
to carry goods from place to 
place. When better roads were 
opened, two-wheeled chaises 
and wagons came into use, 
but until near the close of the 
colonial days, people who made 
ajourney of any length, traveled 
on horseback. In every town 
a tavern, kept by a leading 
citizen, cared for travelers and 
provided a favorite meeting 
place for the folk of the neigh- 
borhood. 

In colonial days the peo- 
ple were far more neighborly 
than we are now. The settlers helped one another in such work 
as burning brush, pulling stumps, husking corn, or raising the 
framework of a barn. If any one was ill, kindly neighbors came 
and volunteered to nurse the sick. If death came to a family, 
the neighbors arranged the funeral and took charge of all the 
affairs of the house and the farm until it was over. We now 
buy these services with money, but in doing so we have lost 
that spirit of neighborliness which meant so much to our 
colonial ancestors. 

The Schools of Our Forefathers. — The Puritans of New 
England highly esteemed education and very early took steps 
to set up a system of public schools. By the famous Massa- 
encouraged chusetts law of 1647, every township of fifty families was 
England dir(H'ted to employ a teacher to teach all children to read and 
write. The same law provided that as soon as any town 
contained one hundred families it should establish a grammar 




%' 



Traveling on Horseback, the Lady Seated 
on a Pillion 



Neighbor 
liness 



Education 



SCHOOLS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 



79 



school to prepare boys for college. An elementary education 
was compulsory in all the New England colonies except Rhode 
Island. 

The early Dutch settlers on the Hudson set up common 
schools, but after their colony passed into the hands of the 
English these schools were neglected. In Pennsylvania there Some 
was little attempt at public education outside of Philadelphia, ^^^°°l^ J? 
where the famous Penn Charter School opened its doors in colonies 
1698. There were some good schools in the towns of the 
middle colonies, but those in the country were few and very 




Colonial Tavern and Stage-coach 
A familiar scene on the highway in later colonial days. 

poor. Some of the German and Scotch-Irish ministers taught 
the rudiments of an education to the children of their congre- 
gations, and in the later colonial period, a few academies were 
established. 

In Virginia and the colonies south of it the means of edu- 
cation were sadly lacking. While there were a few schools, 
most of the children in the southern colonies received only the But few in 
limited instruction which their parents could give them at t^^ South 
home. In the homes of the wealthy planters, tutors were kept 
to teach the boys and girls, and occasionally a rich man sent 
his son to be educated in England. 



80 



OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS 



to free 
schools 



Colonial 
school- 
houses 



The lack of schools in the South was partly due to the 
widely scattered plantations and partly to the fact that many 
Opposition of the aristocratic planters did not wish all children to be 
taught at public expense. This opinion was frankly expressed by 
Governor Berkeley of Virginia, in 1670, when he said: "I thank 
God that there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we 
shall not have [them] these hundred years; for learning hath 
brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and 
printing has divulged them, and libels against the best of 
governments. God keep us from both!" Berkeley and those 
who agreed with him knew that if all the people were educated 
they would soon demand the right to govern themselves. 

The schoolhouses of 
colonial days were very 
small and uncomfortable. 
The first of these in the 
country districts of New 
York and Pennsylvania 
have been described as fol- 
lows: " They were univer- 
sally made of logs. Some 
had a rough puncheon 
floor, others, a 'dirt' floor 
which readily ground into 
dust two or three inches 
thick that unruly pupils 
would purposely stir up in 
clouds to annoy the mas- 
ter and disturb the school. 
Usually the teacher sat in 
the middle of the room, and pegs were thrust between the 
logs around the walls, three or four feet from the ground; 
boards were laid on these pegs; at these rude desks sat 
the older scholars with their backs to the teacher. Younger 
scholars sat on blocks or benches of logs." There was a fire- 
place at one end of the room. When a better schoolhouse 
took the place of this rough hut of logs, it was often built with 
many sides, and furnished somewhat like that shown in the 
picture on this page. 

The teacher of the colonial school was nearly always a 




School in the Days of the Early Settlers 



SCHOOLS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 



81 



man. Many of the teachers were poorly fitted for their work. 
Their methods of teaching were tiresome, and their disciphne Teachers 
was harsh and severe. They beheved in not " sparing the rod and 
spoihng the child." They taught 



without the aid of blackboards, 
slates, or maps, and even paper was 
hard to get. 

The schoolbooks were few and 
uninteresting. The little children 
learned their letters and their first 
spelling lessons from a hornbook. 
This was really not a book at all, 
but a sheet of paper with letters 
and simple syllables on it. This 
was placed upon a flat piece of 
wood and covered with a thin sheet 
of transparent horn. At the lower 
end of the wooden block there was 
a little handle. The hornbook was 
succeeded by the New England 
Primer, the most widely used school- 
book that has ever been studied in 
America. The primer was a little 
book in which, each letter of the alphabet was illustrated 
by a picture and a set of rhymes, nearly all of which were about 
incidents in the Bible. These rhymes began with 




Hornbook 



Schoolbooks 
of the olden 
time 



And ended with 



"In Adam's fall 
We sinned all," 

"Zaccheus he 
Did climb a tree 
His Lord to see." 



After the New England Primer came the spelling book, 
and if a pupil advanced beyond this, he was given a Latin 
grammar. Great stress was laid upon arithmetic or '-'cipher- The course 
ing," as it was called. Few textbooks in arithmetic were °^ study 
used, but the teacher had a manuscript "sum-book" from which 
he gave out rules and problems to his pupils. Especial atten- 
tion was devoted to penmanship, and to "write a good hand" 
6 



82 



OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS 



Colleges 



was thought one of the finest accomphshments. Goose-quill 
pens were used in writing, and it was no small part of the 
teacher's duty to make and mend these pens. Little or no 
attention was given to geography, history, or any of the other 
branches now taught in our common schools. 

The first college in the colonies was founded at Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, in 1636, and was named for John Harvard, a 
Pui'itan minister who gave it one-half his estate and all his 
library. About sixty years after this William and Mary 
College in Virginia, and Yale College in Connecticut were estab- 
lished. Before the close of the colonial era, Princeton, King's 
College, now Columbia University, the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, Brown, and Dartmouth had been added to this list. 



'■.>t'^ 









'"';t-^t"^^**7-^-:;t^«^S§'' ■"."". 



William and Mary College 
This was the first college in Virginia. 

When the Revolution came, every colony north of Maryland 
had a college within its borders, but William and Mary was 
still the only one in the South. Any good high school to-day 
offers a better education than could be secured in the colleges 
of the colonies. 

Newspapers, magazines, and books are almost as important 
in the education of a free people as their schools and colleges. 
Printing in Without the printing press we could hardly have popular 
the colonies education or democratic government. The first press in the 
English colonies in America was set up in Massachusetts in 
1638, and before the colonial period ended there were presses 
in every colony. However, most of the books which the 
colonists used were printed in England. Almanacs, weekly 
newspapers, pamphlets, and schoolbooks like the New England 



CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS LIFE 83 

Primer made up the chief output of the colonial press before 
the Revolution. 

Colonial Churches and Religious Life. — Our leading 
religious denominations came from Europe to America in 
colonial times. The early Virginians were strict Church of Religious 
England men, or Episcopalians. Sooner or later the Anglican, denomina- 
or Episcopalian, Church became the state church in all the 
colonies south of New England except Pennsylvania, though 
in several of them only a minority of the people belonged to it. 
In all the colonies of New England except Rhode Island, the 
Congregational Church was established by law. There were 
Roman Catholics in Maryland, Quakers in Pennsylvania, and 
Baptists in Rhode Island. John Wesley, the founder of 
Methodism, was a missionary in Georgia. Some of the Ger- 
mans were Lutherans, but there were many other sects among 
them. Most of the Scotch-Irish were devout Presbyterians. 

The first American churches, like the earliest dwellings 
and schoolhouses, were rough log buildings, but as soon as the 
people were able they built better houses of worship. Both the Early 
Puritan and Quaker meetinghouses were plain and bare within, churches 
though the Puritans built fine, high steeples upon the roofs of 
their churches. The Episcopal churches in the South were 
more richly furnished. Some of them were built of stone and 
modeled after the parish churches in England. 

Some of the men sent over from England to be the rectors 
of the Anglican churches in America were ignorant, selfish, and 
vicious ; others, however, were of the highest character and The clergy 
were devoted to their duties. As a rule the colonial ministers 
were zealous, upright, able men who possessed great influence 
over the people of their respective communities. The spirit of 
the colonial clergy was well expressed by Jonathan Edwards, 
its greatest member, when he said, ''I am resolved to live with 
all my might while I do live." 

The service in a colonial church would have seemed very 
cheerless and tedious to us. The people were summoned to it 
by a horn, or drum, or bell. Every one was expected to attend. The church 
In the early New England churches and in the Quaker meeting- service 
houses, the men and women sat on opposite sides of the room 
as they have continued to do in some of the Quaker meetings 
until the present. In many of the churches the people were 



84 



OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS 



seated according to their rank and dignity. In New England 
the boys sat in a group by themselves, and a man was appointed 
to keep them in order. The churches were unheated in winter, 
and the women and children sometimes carried little foot- 
stoves filled with hot coals to keep their feet warm. The 
service was not shortened, however, because the church was 
so cold. It usually consisted of the singing of psalms, of a 
prayer an hour long, and of a sermon lasting two or three 
hours. 




A Puritan Minister Preaching 



In all the colonies the Sabbath was kept far more strictly 
than it is now, but in New England the laws against Sabbath- 
Strict breaking were especially severe. All kinds of work and all 
Sabbath forms of recreation on the first day of the week were 
keeping g^gj.j^jy forbidden. No one was permitted to cook, to ride, 
except to and from church, or to walk in the streets or by the 
seashore. Any one who broke the Sunday laws was severely 
punished by fine or whipping. 

When the colonies were planted, nearly all the people in 



REFERENCES 8^ 

the world were intolerant of differences in belief or worship, and 
religious persecution was the rule. This spirit of intolerance Intolerance 
came to America from the Old World. In Virginia, Catholics 
and Quakers were pilloried and fined, and in Massachusetts 
four Quakers were put to death because they persisted in 
preaching their faith. Maryland and Rhode Island showed 
the way to broader toleration, and Pennsylvania had genuine 
religious freedom from its earliest days. 

Our colonial ancestors were a deeply religious people. 
Their fear of God, their upright lives, and their high sense of 
duty to their fellow men are as much a part of our rich heritage Our heritage 
from them as their habits of industry, their dauntless courage, ^^^^ P"'' 
their capacity for self-government, and their love of liberty. 

REFERENCES. 

Thwaites, The Colonies; Lodge, A Short History of the English 
Colonies in America; Greene, Provincial America; Channing, History 
of the United States, Vols. I, II; Eggleston, The Transit of Civilization; 
Brigham, Geographic Influences in American History; Earle, Home Life 
in Colonial Days; Child Life in Colonial Days; Fisher, Men, Women, 
and Manners in Colonial Times. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Coming of the Foreigners. Channing, History of the United 
Slaies, II, 401-420. 

2. Tlie Medical Notions of the Colonists. Eggleston, The Transit 
of Civilization, 48-80. 

3. The Story of the Salem Witchcraft. Fiske, New France and 
Neio England, 133-196. 

4. The Eastern Gateway of the United States. Brigham, Geographic 
Influences in American History, 1-36. 

5. A Visit to a Virginia Plantation. Fiske, Old Virginia and Her 
Neighbors, II, 220-230. 

6. A Picture of Life in Virginia. Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neigh- 
bors, II, 230-235. 

7. The Home of the Schuylers on the Hudson. Fiske, The Dutch 
and Quaker Colonies, II, 266-271. 

8. A Lady's Travel in New England. Hart, American History Told 
by Contemporaries, II, 224-229. 

9. A Story of Travel in New York. Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker 
Colonies, II, 74-86. 

10. Schools and School Life. Earle, Child Life in Colonial Days 
63-89. 



86 OUR COLONIAL ANCESTORS 

11. Sunday in the Colonies. Earle, Home Life in Colonial Days, 
364-387. 

12. An Evangelist in Georgia Hart, American History Told by 
Contemporaries, II, 283-287. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Whittier, Sno'W Bound; Longfellow, Giles Corey of the Salem 
Farms. 

Stories and Essays: Holland, The Bay Path; Dix, The Making of 
Christopher Ferringham; Mistress Content Cradock; B3mner, The Begum's 
Daughter; Johnston, Prisoners of Hope; Hawthorne, Ticice Told Tales; 
The Scarlet Leiter; Franklin, Autobiography; Fjggleston, Our First Century ; 
Coffin, Old Times in the Colonies. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. To what country or countries in Europe can you trace your own 
ancestry? What European peoples are represented in your school? What 
is the origin of the name of your home town? 

2. Why are people less superstitious now than they were in colonial 
times? Why have we stopped using the stocks and the whipping post in 
punishing people convicted of crime? Why should wrongdoers be punished 
at all? 

3. In what ways has the physical geography of j^our neighborhood 
influenced the life of its people? What trees are found in your vicinity? 
What geographical facts determined the location of Boston? Of New 
York? Of Philadelphia? Of Baltimore? Of Charleston? 

4. How many inches of rain fall in a year in your neighborhood? 
What crops are most profitably grown where you live? What effect does 
our daily work have upon us? 

5. What foods that we commonly use were unknown to the colonists? 
Contrast your own life with that of a colonial boy or girl from the stand- 
points of conveniences in the house, clothing, amusements, travel, educa- 
tion, and religion. 



CHAPTER V 



The Rivalry of France and England in America 



French 
explorers 



The Beginnings of New France. — Three great nations, 
Spain, France, and England, each claimed that part of North 
America now occupied by the United States. After the daring Rival claims 
sailors of Queen Elizabeth had defeated the Spanish Armada in America 
and broken the sea power of Spain, it was no longer possible 
for the Spaniards to make good their claim. But France and 
England continued to be rivals for the heart of the American 
continent throughout the entire colonial period of our history. 
We must now turn to the story of their rivalry. 

As early as 1524 Verra- 
zano, an Italian sailor in the 

Frenchservice, while seeking M^ Early 

a western waterway to China 
saw the American coast and 
entered New York harbor. 
Ten years later Jacques 
Cartier, a hardy French 
mariner, boldly crossed the 
Atlantic in a little ship of 
sixty tons and discovered 
the shores of the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence. Returning 
the next year Cartier as- 
cended the St. Lawrence 
River as far as the present 
site of Montreal. Other 
Frenchmen came to this 
northern region to fish or 
to trade for furs, but no 
permanent French settle- 
ment was made in it until 

,11 J. ,1 X .1 Cartier Takes Possession of the Gaspe Coast 

the,dawn oi the seventeenth 

century. The work of the early French explorers is important 

because France based her claim to America upon it. 

Samuel de Champlain was the real founder of New France. 




88 



RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND 



Champlain 
at Quebec 



After fighting in the armies of . King Hemy the Fourth, Cham- 
plain visited Spanish America where he suggested the plan of 
a ship canal across the isthmus of Panama. In 1604 he helped 
to plant the first permanent French settlement in America at 
Port Royal in Acadia, now Nova Scotia. In 1608, at the foot 
of the frowning cliff of Quebec, he founded the city which was 




Outline Map of Eastern North America 



The enmity 
of the 
Iroquois 



destined to be the capital of New France. Champlain began 
his first winter at Quebec with twenty-eight men, and in the 
spring only eight of them were left alive; yet no thought of 
giving up entered the mind of this resolute man. 

In the summer of 1609 Champlain went, with a war party 
of Algonquin Indians, to attack their hereditary enemies, the 
Iroquois, who lived in the present state of New York. He 
did this because he wanted to win the friendship of the Indians 



BEGINNINGS OF NEW FRANCE 



89 




Champlain 
explores the 
interior 



in Canada and at the same time to explore the country. Dur- 
ing this expedition Champlain discovered the beautiful lake 
which now bears his name; and on its shores he easily defeated 
a war band of the Iroquois, who were frightened by the French- 
men's guns, for they had never heard firearms before. This 
little battle had far-reaching consequences. It made the 
Iroquois the relentless enemies of the French colonists in 
Canada, many of whom perished under the tomahawks of these 
fiercest of red men. Because of this enmity of the Iroquois, 
the French were unable to penetrate the region where they 
hved and pushed westward instead in the direction of the 
Great Lakes. 

Ever restless and active, Champlain was foremost in the 
work of exploring the interior of the country. Four years 
after he discovered Lake Champlain 
he led an exploring party up the 
Ottawa River. Day after day these 
intrepid Frenchmen, with their In- 
dian friends, paddled their birch- 
bark canoes up the stream or carried 
them around the numerous rapids 
in the river. From its headwaters 
they crossed to a westward-flowing 
stream and at last stood upon the 
shores of Lake Huron, the first of 
the Great Lakes to be seen by a 
European. 

For more than a quarter of a century Champlain was the 
soul of New France. He toiled without ceasing to strengthen 
the little colony, to bring over more settlers from France, to Success at 
win the friendship of the Canadian Indians, and to defend his last 
people against the savage Iroquois. When he died in 1635 
the French settlement on the St. Lawrence, though still small 
and weak, was firmly established. 

A variety of motives led the French to colonize Canada. 
The hope of finding gold and silver was uppermost in the minds 
of many. The rich fur trade enlisted the interest of the mer- The motives 
chants. The love of adventure and of the wild, free life of of the French 
the forest made its appeal to a host of gallant spirits. The 
king encouraged the movement because it promised to enlarge 



Samuel de Champlain 



90 



RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND 



and fur 
traders 



the territories of France, and the church sent the Jesuits to 
convert the Indians to the Christian faith. 

The French in the Mississippi Valley. — In their zeal to 
bring the Indians into the Christian fold the Jesuit mission- 
Missionaries aries pushed far into the interior of the continent. The Jesuits 
suffered every hardship, and not a few of them met death at 
the hands of the Indians. But not even fear of the awful 
torture which the red men inflicted upon their victims could 
turn these heroic priests from their purpose. Hardly less 
daring were the French fur traders who wandered far and 
wude in search of the rich peltries for which they exchanged 
beads and trinkets, hatchets, firearms, and brandy — the 
"fire-water" which made the Indian more savage than he 
was by nature. Before the seventeenth century drew to a 
close there were mission stations and trading posts on the 
straits of Mackinac, at Sault Ste. Marie, Green Bay, and other 
places on the Great Lakes. 

Very early the Frenchmen who visited the region of the 
Great Lakes heard of a great river farther west. At last 
Father Marquette resolved to find it. In the spring of 1673 
he started from the mission station on the straits of Mackinac 
with Joliet, a French explorer, and five other men. In two 
birch-bark canoes they made their way to the head of Green 
Bay and thence up the Fox River to its source. Guided by the 
Indians, they then crossed to the Wisconsin River and launched 
their canoes upon its waters. Om' greatest American historian, 
Francis Parkman, helps us to travel in imagination with 
Marquette and his men down the Wisconsin. 

"They glided calmly down the tranquil stream, by islands 
choked with trees and matted with entangling grape-vines; 
by forests, groves and prairies, the parks and pleasure-grounds 
of a prodigal nature; by thickets and marshes and broad, bare 
sand bars; und(n' the shadowing trees, between whose tops 
looked down from afar the bold brow of some woody bluff. 
At night, the bivouac — the canoes inverted on the bank, the 
flickering fire, the meal of bison flesh or venison, the evening 
pipes, and slumber'beneath the stars; and when in the morning 
they embarked again, the mist hung on the river like a bridal 
veil, then melted before the sun, till the glassy water and 
the languid woods basked breathless in the sultry glow." 



Marquette's 
expedition 



FRENCH IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 91 

At last "with a joy," writes Marquette, "which I cannot 
express," they found the great river which they sought. For 
two weeks the current of the Mississippi bore the explorers Exploring the 
southward until they came to a village of the Illinois Indians Mississippi 
who feasted them with porridge, fish, dog's flesh, and fat buffalo- 
meat. Resuming their journey they floated with the stream, 
day after day, past the mouths of the Illinois, the Missouri, 
and the Ohio, until they reached the Arkansas River. Mar- 
quette and Joliet were now satisfied that the Mississippi 
flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and decided to return to Canada 
and report what they had seen. Accordingly, they slowly 
retraced their course until they came to the Illinois River, 
ascended that stream, made their way to Lake Michigan and 
finally reached Green Bay in safety. 

While Joliet went to Quebec to report, Marquette remained 
at Green Bay. He was very much broken in health, but the 
following year he returned as he had promised to establish a Death of 
mission among the Illinois Indians. But the work of the Marquette 
unselfish and fearless Jesuit was over. Marquette died the 
next spring, while on his way to his own mission at St. Ignace 
on the straits of INIackinac, and was buried by the shores of 
I>ake Michigan. 

The work of exploring the Mississippi River, begvm by 
Marquette, was continued by La Salle, the young Frenchman 
who had already discovered the Ohio. It would have been La Salle 
hard to find a better man for the great and dangerous task. 
La Salle had a frame of iron which could endure the terrible 
exposure and privation of life in the wilderness. He was fertile 
in plans, bold and energetic in action, and inflexible in purpose. 
His was an unconquerable soul. His penetrating mind foresaw 
the greatness of the Mississippi Valley, and it was his ambition 
to win it all for France. 

La Salle began his work by building a vessel upon the bank 
of the Niagara River above the falls. In this ship, the Griffin, 
the first that ever sailed upon the Great Lakes, he went to Loss of the 
Green Bay. From this point the Griffin, laden with furs, began *^^^ffl^ 
her return voyage but was never seen again. La Salle, with 
his men, went on to the Illinois River where he built a fort. 
The loss of the Griffin and of the supplies, which she was expected 
to bring, made it necessary for La Salle to return to Canada, 



92 



RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND 



La Salle 
claims the 
Mississippi 
Valley for 
France 



which he reached after an overland journey of great hardship. 
La Salle soon returned to the land of the Illinois, and early 
in 1682 he carried out his great plan of exploring the Mississippi 



93 Longitude »' 




French Explorations and Posts in the Valleys 
of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi 

River. With about fifty French- 
men and Indians he drifted in 
canoes down the Mississippi far 
past the point reached by 
Marquette, visiting, from time 
to time, the Indian tribes along 
the shores, until at last he 
reached the mouth of the great 
river and looked out upon the 
waves of the Gulf of Mexico. 
Here La Salle formally pro- 
claimed that the country drain- 
ed by the Mississippi and all its 



tributaries belonged to the king of France. 



THE COLONIES CONTRASTED 93 

La Salle named the new domain of France Louisiana in 
honor of Louis XIV. The Louisiana of La Salle, however, 
included not merely our state of that name but all the land Louisiana 
between the AUeghanies and the Rocky Mountains, from the 
sources of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri to the 
Gulf of Mexico. 

La Salle next planned to plant a French colony in Louisiana 
near the mouth of the Mississippi. With this end in view he 
returned to France and, in 1684, sailed for the Gulf of Mexico The fate of 
with a company of settlers. He failed to find the mouth of ^^ ^^^^ 
the Mississippi and finally landed on the coast of Texas. 
Disease and quarrels among the men brought the colony to 
ruin, and at last La Salle was shot by one of his own men. 

The failure of La Salle did not prevent the French from 
occupying the country about the mouth of the Mississippi. 
Some years after his death a little settlement was made on New Orleans 
the coast and, in 1718, New Orleans was founded and became lou^ided 
the capital of Louisiana. The French colony of Louisiana grew 
very slowly and had only a few thousand inhabitants at the 
close of the colonial period. 

By 1750 the French had made many settlements on the 
banks of the St. Lawrence and had planted the little colony of 
Louisiana on the lower Mississippi. Jesuit missionaries, roving The work of 
fur traders, and far-sighted explorers had given France a t^® French 
claim to the vast region drained by the St. Lawrence and the 
Mississippi. But this region from Quebec and Montreal to 
New Orleans, was still a wilderness inhabited by savage Indians 
and only dotted here and there with French trading posts and 
mission stations. 

The English and French Colonies Contrasted. — There were 
many differences between the English colonists scattered along 
the Atlantic seaboard from New Hampshire to Georgia and English and 
the French settlers on the St. Lawrence. They were unlike in iQ^'^gtg 
their ways of making a living, in their treatment of the Indians, differed 
in their social life, and in their forms of government. No less widely 
striking was the contrast between them in language, in religion, 
and in their relation to their mother countries. 

The English colonists were far more numerous than the 
French. In 1750 there were almost twenty times as many 
people in the English colonies as in all New France. The Inoccupation 



94 



RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND 



In their 
relations 
with the 
Indians 



In social 
life 



In govern- 
ment 



English colonists were nearly all farmers. The French culti- 
vated a little land in Canada, but they were more interested 
in traffic with the Indians. Many of them were fur traders, 
trappers, hunters, boatmen, and wood runners, as those who 
lived a roving life in the forest were called. Both nations had 
extensive fisheric^s. 

The English disliked and despised the Indians and, in the 
end, either drove them away or killed them. The French made 
friends with the red men, lived among them, and sometimes 
intermarried with them. This difference in their treatment of 
the Indians was due in part to the differing interests of the two 
groups of colonists. The English cleared the land, built homes, 
and rapidly increased in numbers. The uncivilized Indians, 
like the wild animals, were naturally swept away by this growth 
of civilized life in America. On the other hand, the French, 
few in number and widely scattered over a vast domain, wished 
to preserve alike the fur-bearing animals and the Indian 
trappers with whom they carried on a profitable trade. Too 
often, instead of civilizing the Indians, the French woodmen 
and trappers became almost as barbarous as their red neighbors. 

In the English colonies nearly every man owned his farm, 
managed it as he pleased, and enjoyed all the fruits of his labor. 
In Canada the land along the river and lake fronts where 
most of the people lived was given in great tracts to landlords, 
who were of higher rank than the rest of the settlers. These 
landlords gave out strips of land to the actual farmers, who 
paid them a small rent for it. In addition to this rent each 
farmer was expected to have his grain ground in his landlord's 
grist mill, to do several days' labor for the landlord each year, 
and to give him one fish in every eleven he caught. In a word, 
the English colonist was a free man, while the French Canadian 
of colonial days was a peasant, subject to many of the vexa- 
tious feudal customs that had existed in France ever since the 
Middle Ages. 

In every one of the English colonies the people were repre- 
sented in the government and were free to manage their local 
affairs as they chose. Such freedom was unknown in New 
France. There the government was entirely in the hands of 
a governor and other agents appointed by the French king. 
The people had no voice even in local matters. Their ruler 



A HALF CENTURY OF CONFLICT 95 

sent from France not only levied their taxes, controlled their 
trade, and excluded from the country all who were not Catholics 
in religion, but even told them "what tools to use, what seeds 
to plant, at what age to marry, and how large fainilics to bring 
up." The English colonists were learning the lessons of de- 
mocracy. The French were still under the iron heel of 
despotism. 

Such were the rivals for the control of North America. 
The English colonists were mainly Protestant in religion and 
possessed a large measure of democratic government. The A striking 
men of New France, on the other hand, spoke the language of contrast 
their fatherland, were members of the Catholic church, had no 
experience in self-government, and were the subjects of a 
despot. While the English far outnumbered the French they 
were divided into thirteen colonies which could rarely act 
together. The French were united under the control of one 
governor and could count on the help of their Indian alhes. 
Both sides were equal in bravery and hardihood. The victory 
in the struggle between them, which was sure to come, would 
determine the destin}'' of America 

A Half Century of Conflict.— In 1689, shortly after the 
English Revolution of 1688 put William and Mary upon the 
throne of England, war broke out between that country and Eariy inter- 
France. Between 1689 and 1763, four great wars were waged colonial wars 
between England and France. The first three of these con- 
tests, King William's War, 1689-1697, Queen Anne's War, . 
1702-1713, and King George's War, 1744-1748, began in Europe 
over European questions. The English and French colonists 
in America fought each other in these wars, not so much because 
of any real dispute between them, as because their mother 
countries were enemies. Yet throughout this half century and 
more of warfare they were steadily becoming more and more 
conscious of their conflicting interests in the New WorlcL 
The fourth and last intercolonial war began in America, as 
we shall see, and was the direct outcome of the rivalry between 
England and France for the control of this continent. 

The French were the aggressors in all the earlier inter- 
colonial wars. War parties of Indians, with a few French 
leaders, made their way across the wide belt of forest and Border 
mountain which lay between the English and French colonies warfare 



96 



RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND 



and attacked the frontier settlements in New England and 
New York. Houses were burned, and men, women, and 
children were killed and scalped or carried away captive by 
the Indians. The story of the French and Indian attack upon 
Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1704, will help us to reaHze what 
this border warfare was like. 




Indians Attacking Deerfield, Massachusetts, 1704 

Deerfield was a typical New England frontier village not 
far from the Connecticut River. Fifteen houses in the middle 
The story of the town were enclosed by a pahsade, a sort of picket fence 
of Deerfield ^^f \ogs. There were many scattered houses on the little farms 
outside this enclosure, but most of the people had taken refuge 
within the palisaded village for the Indians were known to 
be on the warpath. It was in February and the snow lay deep 
upon the ground. In one place it was drifted nearly to the top 
of the palisade. Sentinels were posted inside the enclosure, 
but they sometimes grew careless during the long, frosty nights, 



A HALF CENTURY OF CONFLICT 97 

and it is said that on the morning of the attack they were 
asleep. 

Two miles away in the wintrj^ forest lay a half -frozen, 
starving band of some two hundred Indians and about fifty 
Frenchmen who had made the long march from Canada on The attack 
their snowshoes. In spite of the cold they waited patiently on the village 
until the darkest hour just before the dawn, then crept noise- 
lessly up to the village and over the palisade, and raised the war- 
whoop inside the enclosure before they were discovered. Then 
they attacked the doors of the houses with their axes and 
hatchets. Mr. Williams, the minister of Deerfield, was awak- 
ened by the outcry just in time to see the Indians breaking 
through the shattered door of his home. The savages killed 
two of his children and made prisoners of Williams, his wife, 
and his remaining children. The people in most of the other 
houses met a similar fate. Some scalps were taken, but more 
of the people were captured alive because the French paid 
more for prisoners than they did for scalps. In a few instances, 
as at the house of Mr. Stebbins, the minister's neighbor, the 
imnates succeeded in beating off the Indians and were not 
taken. Many of the captured houses were set on fire. 

At daybreak the men in the neighboring villages saw the 
fire and came to the rescue. The Indians had already collected 
their prisoners and begun to drive them toward the forest. The fate of 
The rescuers chased the remaining Indians out of Deerfield and *^® prisoners 
killed several of them but were unable to retake the prisoners. 
The Indians now started with their captives on the long, awful 
winter march to Canada. The women and children who could 
not keep up were tomahawked, scalped, and left by the way- 
side. Some of the prisoners starved to death, some of the 
children were adopted by the Indians, but most of the captives 
were finally exchanged or ransomed and returned to New Eng- 
land. The fate of Deerfield was very much like that of many 
other frontier settlements in New England and New York 
during this half century of border warfare. 

The English colonists did what they could to defend them- 
selves against these barbarous attacks by building frontier 
forts in which they could take refuge and by watching con- The English 
stantly for the Indian war parties. But they soon realized ^^^^"se 
that their best defense was to carry the war into the enemy's 
7 



98 



RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND 



The French 
strongholds 



country. The Indians were instigated to go on the warpath 
against the Enghsh by the French at Port Royal and Quebec, 
and to these places they returned to collect the reward offered 
for the scalps and prisoners they took. If these centers of French 
influence could be taken by the English, the French power in 
America would be broken. 

Accordingly, we find the English sending expeditions, 
usually by sea, against these French strongholds. In King 
William's War the English captured Port Royal but failed in 
th(nr effort against Quebec, and at the close of this war Port 




Ivy /■.•:?!¥ 4"^ 



White Captives Driven to Canada by the Indians 

Royal was restored to France. In Queen Anne's War the 
English took Port Royal a second time and kept it, but again 
failed utterly in their expedition against Quebec. After they 
lost Port Royal, the French built a strong fortress on Cape 
Breton Island, at the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
and named it Louisburg for the king of France. In King 
George's War the New England colonists, with the aid of the 
English fleet, captured Louisburg, but unfortunately England 
restored it to France in the treaty of peace which ended the war. 
Tne Peace of Queen Anne's War was the only intercolonial war before 

Utrecht 1750 which brought about a definite result. By the im- 



FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 99 

portant treaty of Utrecht, which closed it in 1713, France 
agreed that Acadia, Newfoundland, and the rich fur-bearing 
region on the shores of Hudson Ba,y should belong to England. 
The English changed the name Acadia to Nova Scotia, and • 
later founded Halifax which became the chief city of this 
province. 

The French and Indian War. — By 1750 the English col- 
onists on the Atlantic seal)oard had occupied most of the 
good land between the coast and the mountains. Hunters Its cause 
and fur traders were finding their way through the gaps in 
the Alleghanies and bringing back glowing reports of the fine 
country beyond the mountains. The colonies • claimed this 
western land and began to plan to possess it. When the 
French heard of these plans they were alarmed, for they also 
claimed that all the country west of the mountains belonged 
to them. Then the French promptly took steps to exclude 
the English settlers from the disputed territory, and war be- 
tween the two nations was inevitable. Unlike the earlier inter- 
colonial wars, the French and Indian War, began in America, 
although, sooner or later, most of the nations of Europe were 
drawn into it. 

The physical geography of North America had a great 
influence upon the history of the French and Indian War. 
The Appalachian mountain system lay like a great barrier Geographic 
between the English colonies and New France. The English influences 
must cross this barrier if they were to win the land they coveted. 
But there were only a few places where it was easy to cross the 
mountain system which extends from Canada to Georgia. If 
the French could hold these natural gateways, they could shut 
out English settlement from the valleys of the St. Lawrence 
and the Mississippi. If the English could secure them, nothing 
would stop their swarming pioneers from winning the West. 

Let us look for these important gateways. The St. Law- 
rence River was the great highway leading to the heart of 
Canada. This highway was closed to the English by the The 
strongly fortified naval station at Louisburg, at the entrance to gateways of 
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and by the frowning fortress which 
crowned the chff at Quebec. Canada could be invaded from 
New England and New York by way of the Hudson River, 
Lake George, and Lake Champlain, or by going up the Mohawk 



100 



RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND 



Valley and across Lake Ontario. The French forts at Ti- 
conderoga and Crown Point guarded the Lake Champlain 
route. A fort on the Mohawk River would have closed the 
other road, but the French could not build there on account 
of the hostility of the Iroquois. They sought, therefore, to 
control this part of the country by building Fort Niagara at 
the mouth of the Niagara River and Fort Frontenac near the 
outlet of Lake Ontario. 
The forks f '^^^ important road into the West for the people of Penn- 

the Ohio sylvania, Maryland, and Virginia led up the Potomac to where 

Cumberland now stands, 
thence across the moun- 
tains to the Monongahela 
River, and down that 
stream to where it joins 
the Allegheny to form the 
Ohio. If the French could 
control this point, they 
could shut English settlers 
out of the Ohio valley. 
Virginia claimed the Ohio 
valley, and when Governor 
Dinwiddie of that colony 
heard that the French 
were building forts on the 
Allegheny River, he sent George Washington, then only 
twenty-one years of age, to warn them that they were 
trespassing on English soil. The French paid no attention 
to this warning, and when the Virginians began to build 
a fort at the forks of the Ohio, the French drove them away, 
completed the fort, and named it Fort Duquesne. The French 
were now in possession of all the important points which 
controlled the roads into the disputed territory. If they could 
hold these points, they would win the war which was just 
beginning. 

The history of the French and Indian War is the story of 

a series of English attacks upon the French strongholds whose 

Three years location and purpose we have just noted. For the first three 

of English years of the war, the English failed in almost everything they 

undertook. There were two reasons for this lack of success. 




A Friendly Indian Running to Warn the 
Settlers of an Attack 



FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 



101 



In the first place, it was difficult to get the colonies to act 
together. A congress held at Albany in 1754 to treat with 
the Indians and to plan for united action accomplished little. 
At this congress Benjamin Franklin proposed a plan for uniting 
all the colonies under one government, but his plan of union 
pleased neither the king, who thought it gave the colonies too 
much power, nor the colonists, who feared that it left the 
king too much authority. In the second place, the English 




From an old print. 
Braddock, Dying, Borne from the Field Near Fort Duquesne 

government was very badly managed at this time, and unfit 
men were sent to lead the English forces in America. 

The French and Indian War opened in 1754 when Wash- 
ington built Fort Necessity in western Pennsylvania. Here 
he was attacked by the French and forced to surrender the Braddock's 
fort. The following year General Braddock was sent, with expedition 
two regiments of British regulars and some colonial militia, 
to capture Fort Duquesne and drive the French away from 
the forks of the Ohio. Braddock advanced from the Potomac, 
cutting a road through the mountain wilderness. When within 
a few miles of Fort Duquesne he was attacked by the French 



102 



RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND 



French 
victories 



The spirit of 
William Pitt 



and Indians who were concealed in the woods. Braddock 
knew nothing of forest warfare and refused to learn from 
the colonial troops whom he despised. He kept his men in 
line in the open, where they were shot down in great numbers 
by the unseen foe.. Braddock was mortally wounded, and 
the remnant of his army was saved from utter destruction 
only by the courage and good sense of Washington and the 
colonial militia who fought the Indians in their own way. 

Braddock's defeat was 
not the only disaster of the 
opening years of the war. 
English expeditions against 
Fort Niagara and Louis- 
burg met with no better 
success, while the French 
under their great leader, 
Montcalm, captured the 
English outpost at Oswego 
on Lake Ontario, and Fort 
William Henry at the head 
of Lake George. These 
early French successes 
brought all the horrors of 
Indian wai'fare upon the 
border settlements from 
New York to the Carolinas. 
In 1757 William Pitt, 
the greatest English states- 
man of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, came into power in England. Pitt was a great orator 
and an able, honest man, full of energy and confidence. He 
quickly infused his own high spirit into the management of 
affairs in England, and sent three capable generals, Forbes, 
Amherst, and Wolfe, to lead the English armies in America. 
From this time the English were everywhere successful. In 
1758 Forbes took Fort Duquesne, which was renamed Fort 
Pitt in honor of the great leader in England. In the course of 
time the city of Pittsburgh grew up about it. The year that 
Fort Diiquesne was taken, Fort Frontenac also fell into the 
hands of the English, and Amherst and Wolfe captured Louisburg. 




General James Wolfe 



FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 103 

The year 1759 saw the triumph of England. Fort Niagara 
was easily taken, Amherst captured Ticonderoga and Crown 
Point, and Wolfe led a great expedition against Quebec, the The siege 
last important stronghold of the French. WoKe's task was °^ Quebec 
most difficult. Quebec stands upon a high, steep bluff over- 
looldng the St. Lawrence River. It was strongly fortified and 
was commanded by Montcahn, a very able and cautious 
general. Wolfe spent the summer in looking for a weak point 
in Montcalm's defenses, but found none. 

The approach of winter would make it necessary for Wolfe 
to abandon the siege of Quebec before his ships were frozen 
in the river. The heroic general resolved to make one more The Plains 
attempt to capture the town. On the night of the 12th of «* Abraham 
September he ordered some of his men into boats above Quebec 
and dropped quietly down stream to a little bay, -since 
known as Wolfe's Cove. Landing at this point, his men 
climbed the steep cliff and killed or drove away the guard at 
the top. All night long the boats were bringing more men 
to the foot of this path up the cliff, and when day dawned the 
British army stood in red-coated array upon the Plains of 
Abraham, above Quebec. If these were not driven away, the 
soldiers in the great French stronghold would soon be starved 
out. 

The surprised Montcalm saw the clanger and promptly 
led his troops against the English lines. His attack failed, 
and the French were soon driven behind the walls of the town. Wolfe and 
Wolfe and Montcalm were both mortally wounded. As Wolfe Montcalm 
lay dying upon the field he was told that the French were 
running. "Now, God be praised," he murmured, "I will 
die in peace." Montcalm was carried back into the city, and 
when told that he had only a few hours left to live he replied, 
"So much the better. I am happy that I shall not live to see 
the surrender of Quebec." In the governor's garden to-day at 
Quebec there stands a monument dedicated to these two 
heroic leaders. Inscribed upon it in Latin are these beautiful 
words: "Valor gave them a common death, history a common 
fame, and posterity a common monument." 

The battle upon the Plains of Abraham was the decisive 
event in the long struggle between England and France for j^^ f^j| ^j 
empire in America. Four days after the battle, Quebec sur- New France 



104 



RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND 



rendered to the English, and the following year they occupied 
Montreal and the remaining French forts. The war was over 
in Amei-ica, although fighting between England and France 
went on elsewhere for two or three years longer. 

The Treaty of Paris. — The Treaty of Paris closed the 

French and Indian War in 1763. By this treaty, France with- 

A new map drew from the North American continent. She gave to England 

Americ? ^^^ ^^^ territory east of the Mississippi River, except New 




North America Before and After the French and Indian War 



This war 
made our 
country 
English 



Orleans. That city and all the French lands west of the 
Mississippi were ceded to Spain. During the war, Spain had 
fought on the side of France, and the English had taken Havana 
and Manila from her. In her desire to recover these colonial 
cities, Spain now gave; Florida to England in exchange for them. 
The French and Indian War is an important landmark 
in the history of America. It ended the long rivalry between 
England and France for the control of the great valleys of the 
St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. It gave the heart of the 
continent to men of the English-speaking race. It insured the 
spread of English ideas of freedom, self-government, and 
religious liberty throughout the United States. 



REFERENCES 105 

Scarcely less important were the immediate effects of this 
war upon the English colonists in America. With the removal 
of the danger of French and Indian attack on the frontier, It led the 
they could cross the mountains in safety and Ijegin the settle- ^^^ ^° t^® 
ment of the West. They felt less dependent upon England 
than ever before. They no longer needed her help against 
New France, and they had learned in the hard school of war to 
act together. They were growing conscious of their own 
strength and of their own fighting qualities. 

England won a vast empire in the French and Indian War. 
In trying to govern this new empire she did many things which 
first irritated and then alienated her American colonies. The 
French and Indian War hastened the coming of the Revolution 
and helped to train leaders like Washington, who were to 
fight the battles of the War for Independence. 

REFERENCES. 

Parkman, The Pioneers of France in the New World; The Jesuits in 
North America; La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West; The Old 
Regime in Canada; Count Frontenac and Neiv France under Louis XIV ; 
A Half Century of Conflict; Montcalm and Wolfe; Thwaites, France in 
America; Fiske, New France and New England; Sloane, The French 
War and the Revolution; Finley, The French in the Heart of America; 
Channing, History of the United States, Yol. II; Semple, A riierican History 
and Its Geographic Conditions. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Founding of Quebec. Parkman, Pioneers of France, 324-338. 

2. How Champlain Incurred the Hatred of the Iroquois. Parkman, 
Pioneers of France, 339-352. 

3. The Story of Marquette. Parkman, La Salle, 48-71. 

4. An Adventure of La Salle. Parkman, La Salle, 175-187. 

5. The Death of La Salle. Parkman, La Salle, 396-408. 

6. A Heroic Jesuit. Parkman, The Jesuits in North America, 
211-239. 

7. The Story of Deerfield. Parkman, A Half Century of Conflict, 
I, 52-89. 

8. The Beginnings of Louisiana. Parkman, A Half Century of 
Conflict, I, 288-314. 

9. Braddock's Defeat. Parkman, Montcalm, and Wolfe, I, 187-233. 
10. The Removal of the Acadians. Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, 

I, 234-284. 



106 RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND 

11. The Capture of Louisburg. Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, II, 
52-81. 

12. The Battle of Quebec. Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, II, 259- 
297. 

13. The People of New France. Thwaites, The French in America, 
124-142. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Whittier, St. John; Pentucket; Thomas Dunn English, 
The Sack of Deerfield; Longfellow, A Ballad of the French Fleet; Evan- 
geline; Plimpton, Fort Duquesne. 

Novels: Cooper, The Lad of the Mohicans; The Pathfinder; Doyle, 
The Refugees; Parker, The Seats of the Mighty; Catherwood, The Lady 
of Fort St. John; The Romance of Dollard; Heroesof the Middle West; The 
Story of Tardy; King, Monsieur Motte. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. How is a birch-bark canoe made? What is meant by a "portage"? 

2. Draw a map of the Great Lakes. What are the names of the bodies 
of water that connect them? 

3. Contrast the motives of the French and English colonists in 
America. 

4. Trace on a map the route of Marquette; the travels of La Salle. 

5. What wars in Europe correspond to the first three intercolonial 
wars in America? In what way did the French and Indian War differ 
from all the earlier intercolonial wars? 

6. Explain how the physical geography of North America influenced 
the history of the French and Indian War. Locate upon the map the 
important places in this war. 

7. Why did the English fail in the earlier part of the French and 
Indian War? Why did they succeed in the later part? 

8. Show on the map the changes in territory brought about by the 
French and Indian War. How did this war prepare the way for the 
Revolution? 



CHAPTER VI 

The Causes of the Revolution 

The True Character of the American Revolution. — Long 
before America was discovered, the English people were fighting 
to guard their freedom against the tyranny of kings and nobles. The long 



In 1215 the barons of Eng- 
land forced the wicked King 
John to sign the Great 
Charter, in which he prom- 
ised to recognize and protect 
the rights of his people. 
Within a hundred years 
after the Great Charter was 
signed , the people of England 
won the right to be repre- 
sented in the Parliament, or 
lawmaking bod 3^ of the 
reahn. We have already 
seen how the English Parha- 
m^t resisted the tyranny 
of Charles I and put him to 
death, and how the leaders 
of the people drove James 
II from the throne in the 
Revolution of 1688. That 
Revolution made Parlia- 
ment the supreme authority in England, but it was a Par- 
Uament controlled by the nobles and the rich. The common 
people of the land had little voice in it. The struggle to make 
the English government truly democratic was yet to come, 
and the Revolution, in which the English colonists in America 
won their independence from their mother country, was the 
first great battle in that contest. The best men in England 
saw this clearly at that time, and all Englishmen admit it now. 
Some years ago the British Ambassador to our country said: 
"Englishmen now recognize that in the Revolution you were 
fighting their battles." 

•107 




struggle for 

English 

liberty 



King John Signing the Great Charter to Which 
We Owe Many of Our Rights 



108 CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 

It was natural that English-speaking men should win the 

right of complete self-government first in America. The 

Free men English Puritans and Quakers, and the Scotch-Irish Presbyteri- 

found g^jjg ^^Y\o came to the New World in such large numbers during 

freedom in the colonial period, were the most democratic people of their 

the colonies time. They left behind them many of the aristocratic notions 

and customs which had existed in the mother country for 

centuries. The dangers and the hardships of life in a new 

country had helped to make all the colonists bold, hardy, and 

self-reliant. They had found in their new homes far more 

freedom to speak and to act as they pleased than their ancestors 

had ever known in the (31d World. The colonists had learned 

to love this new freedom, and they were quick to resent every 

effort to take it from them. 

During the later colonial period there had been a great 

deal of strife between the colonists and the governors sent from 

Training in England to rule them. Though many of these quarrels between 

^®^^" ^ the governors and the people were over petty or local questions, 

government . . . i -j ^ ' 

they were important in teaching the people to know their 

rights and in giving them courage to maintain them. Some- 
times laws passed by the legislatures of the colonies were set 
aside by the authorities in England because they were thought 
to be unwise or contrary to the interests of the mother country. 
This practice displeased the colonists, who thought that they 
knew best what laws they needed. But most of all, the people 
of the colonies resented the Navigation Acts which, as we have 
seen, were intended to make them buy all their imported goods 
in England and sell most of their exports to that country. 

But in spite of the long-standing dissatisfaction over these 
matters, the American colonists were strongly attached to 
Attachment their mother country in 1763. They rejoiced in the British 
to England success in the French and Indian War — a success which they 
had helped to win — because it ended the old danger of French 
and Indian attack from Canada and opened the way for settle- 
ments beyond the Alleghany Mountains. The colonists loved 
the manners, the customs, and even the fashions of England. 
No one thought of independence. Benjamin Franklin, the 
greatest American of the later colonial days, said that he had 
never heard from any person drunk or sober the least expres- 
sion of a wish for separation. Yet only twelve years after the 



NEW BRITISH POLICY IN AMERICA 



109 



The English 
government 



signing of the Treaty of Paris, in 1763, the colonists were in open 
rebelhon against the British government. We must now trace, 
step by step, the history of the quarrel with the mother country 
which resulted in the establishment of the independence of the 
United States. 

A New British Policy in America. — As we saw at the close 
of the last chapter, England had acquired a vast empire during 
the French and Indian War. While Pitt and his generals, The British 
Amherst and Wolfe, were winning North America from France, empire 
another great Englishman, Robert Clive, was laying the foun- 
dations of British power in India. 
When peace was proclaimed in 1763, 
England was facing the question 
how to govern this great new empire. 

The government of England at 
this time was unfit to undertake 
so difficult a task. For fifty years 
the kings of England had possessed 
very little actual authority. The 
real power, as we have said, was 
vested in Parliament, which con- 
sisted of a House of Lords, most 
of whose members were hereditary, 
and an elected House of Commons. 
But the House of Commons did not 
truly represent the people of Eng- 
land. Many small and insignificant 
towns were represented in it because they had long before been 
given the right to send members to parliament while large and 
thriving cities of recent growth sent no members at all. The 
masses of the English people did not even have the right to 
vote. The great noblemen and the rich merchants who con- 
trolled Parliament really governed the country. 

In 1760, George III came to the throne of England. In 
his boyhood his mother had often said to him, "George, be 
king," and he began his reign with the determination to win George III 
back the power which the recent kings had lost. Few kings 
of England have been less fit to be entrusted with power. 
George III was ignorant, narrow-minded, and obstinate. He 
was jealous of men of ability, like Pitt, and appointed his 




King George HI 
The King who lost America. 



110 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 



Efforts to 
enforce the 
Navigation 
Acts 



A standing 
army in 
America 



Taxation 
without 
representa- 
tion 



ministers from among those who would do his bidding in all 
things. He bribed the corrupt Parliament to support his 
plans. It was mainly his fault that England lost her American 
colonies. John Richard Green, one of the greatest of English 
historians, declares, "the shame of the darkest hour of England's 
history lies wholly at his door." 

In 1763, George III made George Grenville his prime 
minister. Grenville knew that the colonists had refused to 
obey the Navigation Acts, and he resolved to enforce these 
laws to the letter regardless of the consequences. In carrying 
out his purpose, the courts issued Writs of Assistance, which 
were general search warrants authorizing the officers of the 
law to search the homes of the colonists for goods upon which 
the duties had not been paid. The colonists thought that 
these writs were illegal. At the same time, ships of the navy 
were stationed off the coast of America to prevent smuggling. 
This effort to enforce the Navigation Acts severely injured the 
commerce of New England and stirred up a bitter feeling in 
that section against the British government. 

The maintenance of a standing army in the colonies was 
another feature of the new British policy in America. It was 
said that British troops were needed in America to guard the 
frontier from Indian attacks and to defend the colonies against 
foreign invasion. But the Americans felt that they were quite 
able to take care of themselves if they were attacked by the 
Indians. They feared that the British soldiers sent among 
them might be used to keep them in subjc^ction to the power 
of England. 

In the third place, Grenville proposed that Parliament 
should levy a tax upon the Americans to help pay the expense 
of keeping a standing army in their midst. From the English 
standpoint it was reasonable that the colonists should contribute 
toward their own defense. While the colonists did not want 
British troops in America at all, they particularly objected to 
paying a tax laid upon them ])y Parliament because they 
believ(^d that they were not represented in that body. On this 
point there was a difference of opinion between the people in 
England and the colonists. The English said that the members 
of the House of Commons represented all the inhabitants of 
the British Empire, the colonists included. The colonists had 



THE STAMP ACT 111 

long been accustomed to elect men in their various towns or 
counties to represent them in the colonial legislature which 
made their laws, and they declared that they were not repre- 
sented in a distant parliament in which not a single American 
had a seat, and in the selection of whose members they had 
no voice. They held that Englishmen everywhere could be 
taxed only by their representatives and that taxation without 
representation was tyranny. 

The attempt of the British government, during the first 
fifteen years of the reign of George III, to do these three things 
which it had never done before in America, namely, to enforce The 
the Navigation Acts, to maintain a standing army in the immediate 
colonies, and to tax the American colonists to help pay for the Revolution 
army, was the direct cause of the Revolution. We must next 
notice some of the things which were done in carrying out this 
new policy and note the effect of these acts upon the American 
people. 

The Stamp Act. — In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp 
Act. This law provided that all legal documents, such as 
deeds, wills, and licenses, must be written or printed upon The act 
stamped paper bought of the British government. Almanacs, passed in 
newspapers, advertisements, and playing cards were also taxed. English 
The money raised in this way was to be used to help pay the protest 
expense of keeping the British troops in America. 

The Stamp Act was passed in spite of the protest of Isaac 
Barre, a friend of the Americans in Parliament, who called the 
colonists "those sons of Liberty" and warned the House of 
Commons that ''the same spirit of freedom which actuated 
that people at first will accompany them still." Little atten- 
tion was paid to this warning. No one seemed to have any 
idea that the stamp taxes would be resisted in America. 

The news of the passage of the Stamp Act alarmed the 
Americans. Protests against it as an act of tyranny were 
heard from every quarter. The legislature of Virginia declared, Alarm in 
"That the General Assembly of this colony have the only and America 
sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes and impositions 
upon the inhabitants of this colony." It was in a famous 
speech in support of this declaration that Patrick Henry said, 
"Tarquin and Ccesar each had his Brutus, Charles the First 
his Cromwell, and George the Third — " (at this point the 



112 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 



chairman and some of the members shouted, "Treason! 
Treason!") — "may profit by their example," continued Henry. 
"If this be treason, make the most of it." 

Virginia was not the only colony to protest. There was 
intense excitement throughout the whole country. The legis- 
The Stamp latures of several of the other colonies, and meetings of the 
Act Congress pgople in many towns and counties, passed resolutions of remon- 
strance. Everywhere the newspapers condemned the hated 




Patrick Henry Addressing the Virginia Assembly 



law. At the suggestion of Massachusetts, nine of the colonies 
sent representatives to a Stamp Act Congress which met in 
New York in October, 1765. James Otis of Massachusetts, 
John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, and Christopher Gadsden of 
South Carolina were leaders of this meeting. The Stamp Act 
Congress declared that "no taxes can be constitutionally 
imposed upon the people of the colonies but by their respective 
legislatures." It also sent an address to the king and petitions 
.to each house of parliament asking for the repeal of the stamp 
taxes. The Stamp Act Congress helped the colonists to see 
the need of acting together. Christopher Gadsden said, "There 



SECOND ATTEMPT TO TAX COLONISTS 113 

ought to be no New England man, no New Yorker, known on 
the continent, but all of us, Americans." 

The opposition of the colonists to the stamp taxes was not 
limited to protests and remonstrances. From New Hampshire 
to South Carolina there was rioting and mob violence. Every- Violent 
where associations, called Sons of Liberty, sprang up. The resistance t 
motto of the members of these associations was "Liberty, taxes 
Property, and No Stamps," and their purpose was forcible 
resistance to the Stamp Act. The wrath of the people was 
especially directed against the men who were appointed to 
distribute the stamps. Their windows were broken, in some 
instances their houses were destroyed, and all sorts of insults 
were offered them. When the stamped paper arrived in America 
it was seized and destroyed. Before the day came when the 
hated act was to go into effect, every stamp distributor in the 
colonies had been forced to resign. 

Many of the colonists agreed not to import or to use 
English goods while the Stamp Act was in force. This action 
led the merchants in England, who were beginning to suffer The repeal 
financial loss from the falling oft" of their American trade, ^ ^^^ ^*^™ 
to petition Parliament for the repeal of the objectionable 
law. In the meantime George Grenville had fallen from 
power and the new English ministry was more favorable 
to America. Early in 1766, a bill to repeal the Stamp 
Act was introduced in Parliament. In the great debate 
which took place on this proposal, Pitt, ever the friend of the 
colonies, denied the right of Parliament to tax the colonists, 
and said, "I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions 
of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to 
submit to be slaves would have been fit instruments to make 
slaves of the rest." It is probable that a majoi-ity of the 
English people agreed with Pitt in this sentiment. Benjamin 
Franklin, who was at this time in London as the agent of 
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, told the House of Commons 
that the Americans would never obey the Stamp Act and that 
it ought to be repealed. At last the Parliament followed the 
advice of Pitt and Franklin and repealed the troublesome law, 
amid great rejoicing in England and America. 

The Second British Attempt to Tax the Colomsts. — When ^he 
Parliament repealed the Stamp Act it declared that it had the ^.cts 



114 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 



power to bind the people of America "in all cases whatsoever." 
No one paid much attention to this declaration at the time 
it was madej but the Americans were reminded of it in 1767 
when Parhament laid duties on glass, paints, red and white 
lead, paper, and tea imported into the colonies. The money 
raised by these taxes was to be used to pay the salaries of the 
colonial governors and judges. At the same time the obnoxious 
Writs of Assistance were declared to be legal and men were 




fejj 






nny) 




The Hated Revenue Stamps 

sent to America to look after the enforcement of the Navigation 
Acts. All these laws are called the Townshend Acts, after 
Charles Townshend, the English minister who proposed them. 
Wlien news of the passage of the Townshend Acts reached 
America, the spirit of unrest, which had been quieted by the 
Unrest in the repeal of the Stamp Act, broke out afresh. Once more the 
colonies colonists emphatically denied the right of Parliament to tax 

them without their consent. Moreover, they especially objected 
to the use which was to be made of the money raised by the 
new taxes. In their own legislatures the colonists had always 
voted the salaries of their governors and judges. This gave 
them some control over those officials. The people felt that if 
Parhament took this right away from them they would lose 
that control altogether. But, as they were beginning to realize 
the danger in rioting and mob violence, they now tried to 
confine their opposition to the Townshend Acts to mere 
protests and remonstrances. 

During the years of protest against the Townshend Acts 

which followed their passage in 1767, Samuel Adams of Massa- 

Adams and chusetts, John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, and Patrick Henry 

Dickinson Qf Virginia were the foremost champions of American rights. 

Samuel Adams, a shrewd politician who was the clerk of the 



SECOND ATTEMPT TO TAX COLONISTS US 

Massachusetts legislature, wrote a circular letter from that 
body to the other colonies in which he suggested that they 
all stand together in opposing the unwise and illegal pohcy of 






A Wecl<Iy, Political, and Commercial Paper ; open to all Parties, but influenced by None 





OL. I-l THURSDAY, March 7, 1771 [Numb. 1. 




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7 'fi. V.^ m^em^ 



An American Newspaper in 1771 



116 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 



Great Britain. This letter was approved by the colonies, but 
it was bitterly resented by the British government. John 
Dickinson, one of the best men of the time, wrote a series of 
papers called ''The Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer," which 
had a very great influence upon the opinion of the people. 
He argued "that we cannot be happy, without being free; 
that we cannot be free, without being secure in our property; 
that we cannot be secure in our property, if, without our 













^ ^^^a^' 



.v^S*^ 



^■^g,-^ 



Growing 



British Troops Landing at Boston in 1768 

consent, others may, as by right, take it away; that taxes 
imposed upon us by parliament do thus take it away." 

At the height of the discussion over the Townshena Acts 
Parhament suggested that the American leaders should be 
brought to England for trial. This suggestion aroused a storm 



indignation of mdignation among the colonists, who declared that the right 
m America e ij--iix-ii • c i- 

01 a man accused or orime to be tried by a jury irom his own 

vicinity was one of the sacred rights of Englishmen. 

In the meantime the colonists were everywhere entering 

into agreements not to import or to use English goods. The 
Parliament vigorous protest from America, the warnings of some of its 
yields Q-^yjj members who said, "Unless you repeal this law, you run 

the risk of losing America," and most of all, perhaps, the 

petitions of the English merchants who were losing their 



BRITISH TROOPS IN AMERICA 



117 



American trade led Parliament in 1770 to repeal all of the duties 
imposed in 1767, except the tax on tea. The tea tax was 
continued in order to establish the principle that Parhament 
had the right to tax the people of the colonies. 

How Keeping British Troops in America Caused Trouble. — 
As we have seen, it was a part of the new British policy toward British 
the colonies to keep troops in America after the close of the ^merica^ 
French and Indian War. The most of these soldiers were 




The Boston "Massacre" 



stationed in the conquered French provmce of Canada and at 
Fort Pitt, Fort Niagara, Detroit and other points on the 
western frontier. It was expected that their presence at these 
places would help to protect the border settlements from 
Indian attacks. 

It was not long, however, before the red coats of the 
British soldiers became a familiar sight upon the streets of the 
city of New York. The commander-in-chief of the British 
forces in America early established his headquarters in New 
York because the physical geography of the country made that 



118 CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 

city its natural military center. From New York, troops 
could easily be sent to Canada, by way of the Hudson River 
and Lake Champlain, to the western frontier through the 
Mohawk Valley and along the Great Lakes, and to the West 
Indies by sea. These were the places where it was thought 
they were most likely to be needed. 

When it was first planned to keep a permanent standing 

army in America, Parliament required the colony in which 

New York troops were stationed to provide barracks for the soldiers, and 

refuses to ^q supply them with salt, vinegar, rum or beer, and a few 

the^roops other articles. As so many of the troops were in New York, 

the burden of this expense fell heavily, and as its people thought 

very unjustly, upon that province, which refused to comply 

with the law. This action of New York led to a bitter quarrel, 

lasting several years, between that colony and the British 

government. 

But the most serious collision between the colonists and the 
British troops occurred in Boston. Two regiments were sent 
The Boston to that city in 1768 to help enforce the Navigation Acts. From 
Massacre ^j^^^ ^^st these soldiers were a constant source of irritation to the 
people of Boston, who charged them with racing horses on 
Sunday, just outside the church doors, and with disturbing the 
quiet of the streets at night with their drunken shouts. The 
people, on the other hand, constantly annoyed the soldiers 
by calling them "bloody-backs," "scoundrels in red," and other 
insulting names. Matters came to a crisis one night in March, 
1770, when a crowd of men and boys threw snowballs at a 
picket guard of eight men and dared them to fire. At last, 
in-itated beyond endurance, the soldiers fired, killing four men 
and wounding several others, of whom two afterward died. 

The Boston Massacre, as this affair was called, created 
intense excitement. The next day a great mass meeting of the 
Its conse- citizens of Boston sent a committee to the governor to ask that 
quences ^}^g troops be removed from the city to an island in the harbor. 
Samuel Adams, who headed this committee, told the governor 
"that the voice of three thousand freemen demanded that all 
soldiery be forthwith removed from the town, and that if he 
failed to heed their just demand, he did so at his peril." The 
governor yielded and ordered both regiments to be withdrawn 
from the city. This affair was not really a massacre and the 



QUARREL OVER THE TEA TAX 119 

soldiers were not seriously to blame, as is shown by the fact 
that all but two of them were acquitted by a Boston jury when 
they were brought to trial, and that these two were only slightly 
punished. But the story of the Boston Massacre shows the 
grave danger of trying to keep troops among a free people 
who neither need nor want them. 

The Quarrel Over the Tea Tax. — When Parliament repealed 
the taxes on glass, paper, and painter's colors, it retained the 
duty on tea, in order to cstabHsh its right to tax the colonists. The hated 
This was a great blunder. The Parliament failed to see that *®^ *^ 
the principle of its right to tax them,- and not the paltry sum 
of money which they would have to pay, was the very thing 
against which the colonists were contending. For the next 
three years, discussion raged over the hated tea tax, and the 
longer they talked about it the more exasperated the people , 

became. The newspapers were filled with exhortations like 
this, by a New Hampshire rhymester: 

"Rouse, every generous, thoughtful mind. 
The rising danger flee ; 
If you would lasting freedom find, 
Now then, abandon tea!" 

Everywhere the people were urged not to buy or sell or drink 
the "fated plant of India's shore," as another newspaper poet 
called it. Many agreed not to use it, while others drank tea 
that was smuggled from Holland. 

At last, the British government foolishly tried to bribe the 
colonists to use the English tea and thus recognize the right of 
taxation. At this time tea was brought to England by the Trying to 
English East India Company. It was taxed a shilling a pound bribe the • 
in England, and if it was sent to the colonies, it had to pay an 
additional tax of threepence in America. The East India 
Company had great quantities of tea stored in London, and 
Parliament now said that such part of this tea as was sent to 
America need not pay the English tax at all. This would make 
the tea cheaper in America than it was in England, and the 
English authorities thought that the colonists would surely 
be willing to buy it when they could get it [it such a bargain. 
They little understood the spirit of America. 



120 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 



Several ships laden with tea were now sent to the colonies. 

At Charleston, South Carolina, the tea was landed, but no one 

Tea sent to would buy it and it was stored in cellars; later, after the war 

America is began, it was sold for the benefit of the Revolutionary govern- 

returned'^ ment. A meeting of the citizens of Philadelphia voted that 

every person who favored unloading, selling, or receiving the 

tea was an enemy to his country. In both Philadelphia and 

New York, the tea was sent back to England. 




Faneuil Hall 
Called "the Cradle of American Liberty." "The Sons of Liberty," often "rocked the 
Cradle" in their wrath against unjust King George m and his Ministers. 

When the tea ships came to Boston the people, led by 
Sanmel Adams, refused to permit the tea to be landed. When 
The Boston it was seen that the governor would not permit the tea to be 
Tea Party gg^^ j^g^^j^ ^q England, the people thought that the officers 
intended to try to land it in Boston by force. Accordingly, a 
party of about fifty men, disguised as Mohawk Indians, went 
on board the ships one evening in December, 1773, and threw 
the tea into the sea. The Boston Tea Party, as this action 
was called, was not the act of an excited mob, but a carefully 
planned and deliberate defiance of the authority of England. 



PARLIAMENT PUNISHES BOSTON 121 

Parliament Punishes Boston and Massachusetts. — The 

news of the Boston Tea Party aroused gi'eat indignation in 

England. Even the friends of America condemned it, and the England 

leading members of Parliament denounced it in the harshest indignant 

terms. It was the general opinion in that body that Boston 

must be forced to submit, and one member went so far as to say, 

"The town of Boston ought to be knocked about their ears and 

destroyed. You will never meet with proper respect to the laws 

of this country until you have destroyed that nest of locusts." 

Lord North, the prime minister, promptly introduced a 

series of bills to inflict the proposed punishment upon Boston 

and iVIassachusetts. The first measure, called the Boston Port Parliament 

Bill, closed the port of Boston to all ships until that rebellious Punishes the 

colonists 
town should pay for the tea thrown overboard and promise to 

obey the laws in the future. A second bill practically destroyed 

free government in Massachusetts. Hereafter most of the 

officers in that colony were to be appointed by the king or by 

the governor and, except for elections, the people could not 

even hold town meetings without the written consent of the 

governor. A third bill provided that officers accused of murder 

or other high crimes committed while they were suppressing 

riots or enforcing the law could be sent to another colony or to 

England for trial. A fourth required the people to provide 

quarters for the soldiers stationed in their midst. Last of all 

came the Quebec Act, which extended the boundaries of the 

province of Quebec to the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, 

thus depriving several of the colonies of western land which 

they claimed to own. 

These acts, designed to punish the disobedient Americans, 
were not passed without protest in Parliament. Fox, a great 
orator and ever a friend of liberty, said that the tea tax ought English 
to be unconditionally repealed. Edmund Burke, the greatest friends of 
orator of his time and a firm friend of America, pointed out 
the folly of trying to coerce the colonies. But Lord North 
and the king's friends would not hsten to these men. The 
tea tax was not repealed, and the bills to punish Boston and 
Massachusetts were promptly passed. In the colonies these 
measures were called the Five Intolerable Acts. 

The Growth of Union in America. — The passage of the submission 
Five Intolerable Acts brought the colonies face to face with the or union 



122 CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 

alternative of submission to the authority of Parhament or of 
resistance to the British demands. They were resolved not to 
submit, but they were also beginning to see clearly that there 
was little hope of successful resistance unless all the colonies 
acted together. 

It was far more difficult in those days to get the people 
to act together than it is now. In our time the railroads, 
It was hard telephone and telegraph lines, newspapers with a wide circu- 
toe^^her lation, and a postal service that reaches every corner of the 
land tie our country together and make it easy for our people 
to think and act as one upon any great question of national 
concern. The colonists lacked all these means of communi- 
cation and ti'ansportation. They seldom traveled far from 
home, and they knew very little about the country beyond their 
own immediate vicinity. Consequently, their thoughts, their 
interests, and their patriotism were local. 

The colonists of 1774 had never really acted all together 
though some things in their history had made them think of 
Early union. In 1643 four of the New England colonies had united 

attempts at [j^ order to defend themselves against the Indians and against 
the encroachments of their Dutch and French neighbors. This 
New England confederation lasted for about forty years. The 
long wars with the French and Indians in Canada had brought 
the troops of different colonies together and taught them some- 
thing of the strength there is in acting in unison. In 1754 
Benjamin Franklin had proposed a plan of union for all the 
colonies, but, as we have seen, it was rejected. The Stamp 
Act Congress of 1765 was a more recent example of concerted 
action. 

In 1772, Samuel Adams, a keen and practical leader who 

saw very clearly the necessity of union, proposed in the Boston 

Committees town meeting that a committee be appointed to write to the 

of corre- other towns in Massachusetts, stating the rights and grievances 

spon ence ^^ ^^^^ colonists. This scheme was adopted, and soon the 

other Massachusetts towns appointed similar committees of 

correspondence. These committees did much to form and 

guide public opinion in the colony. Governor Hutchinson, who 

disliked the committees of correspondence, said that they 

worked ''to strike the colonists with a sense of their just claim 

to independence, and to stimulate them to assert it." 



UNION IN AMERICA 



123 



The First 

Continental 

Congress 



In 1773, intercolonial committees of correspondence were 
appointed. Led by Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, the 
legislature of Virginia voted to appoint a permanent committee 
"to maintain a correspondence with our sister colonies." 
Several other colonies quickly followed the example of Virginia. 
The meml)ers of the various 
intercolonial committees of 
correspondence compared 
opinions, became better 
acquainted with one an- 
other, and in this way pre- 
pared the ground for a union 
of all the thirteen colonies 
in their hour of need. 

When the news of the 
passage of the Intolerable 
Acts reached America, it 
was felt that the hour for 
united action had arrived. 
Several of the colonies 
suggested that a general 
congress should be held, 
and at the call of Massa- 
chusetts, all of them, ex 
cept Georgia, elected dele- 
gates to the First Con- 
tinental Congress, which 
met in Carpenter's Hall in 
Philadelphia in September 
and October, 1774. The colonies sent their ablest men to this 
meeting. Samuel and John Adams of Massachusetts, John 
Jay of New York, John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, Patrick 
Henry and George Washington of Virginia, and John Rutledge 
of South Carohna, were among the leaders. All these men 
were destined to play a great part in the coming Revolution. 

After careful deliberation, the members of the First Conti- 
nental Congress adopted a Declaration of Rights in which they 
said that the colonists were entitled to all the rights of English- Its work 
men and that their own legislatures alone could make laws for 
them. The Congress also formed an Association whose mem- 




L-avmg Carpenter's Hall, 
Philadelphia 



124 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 



Results 



War draws 
near 



The people 
help Boston 



Preparation 
for the com- 
ing contest 



bers agreed not to import any British goods. Addresses 
stating the American position were sent to the king, to the 
people of the colonies, and to the people of Great Britain. 
Before adjourning it was planned to hold a new congress in 
May, 1775, if the government of England had not righted the 
wrongs of America before that time. 

One of the most important results of the meeting of the 
First Continental Congress was the opportunity it gave the 
leaders from the several colonies to get acquainted with one 
another and to become friends. In this way the Congress greatly 
strengthened the growing sentiment of union. Patrick Henry, 
the most eloquent member, finely expressed this feeling when 
he said, "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, 
New Yorkers, and New Englandcrs are no more. I am not a 
Virginian, l)ut an x\merican." 

Drifting toward War. — During the winter following the 
meeting of the First Continental Congress, the country was 
steadily drifting toward war. Instead of listening to the 
protests of America, Parliament passed more drastic measures. 
The trade of New England was further restricted, and Massa- 
chusetts was declared to be in a state of rebellion. General 
Gage had already gone to Boston with four regiments of British 
soldiers. More troops were now sent to him and he was ordered 
to suppress the rebels by force. 

The closing of the port of Boston to all commerce caused 
great suffering among the poor of that city. Every one of the 
colonies sent supplies to the people of Boston during the winter 
of 1774-75. This relief was accompanied by letters which 
I'eveal the state of mind of the Revolutionary party throughout 
the colonies. The Connecticut committee wrote, "The people 
in all this part of the country are, to a man, resolutely determined 
to yield you all the assistance in our power." The South Caro- 
lina patriots declared that "Carolina stands foremost in her. 
resolution to sacrifice her all in your defense." The letters 
from the other colonies breathed the same sentiments. 

In the meantime the colonists were agreed in preparing to 
defend themselves. In Massachusetts, arms and ammunition 
were collected, the militia were organized, and one-fourth of 
them — called the "minute-men" — were to be ready to march 
at a moment's warning. The other colonies began to follow 



DRIFTING TOWARD WAR 



125 



the example of Massachusetts. It was while the Virginia legis- 
lature was considering a motion to arm and train the militia 
of that colony that Patrick Henry in the most famous of 
Revolutionary speeches said, "If we wish to be free; if we 
mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which 
we have been so long contending; if we mean not basely to 




Israel Putnam Unhitching His Horse from the Plow to Start for the American 
Camp before Boston 

abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long 
engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon 
until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained — we 
must fight! I repeat it, sir — we must fight! An appeal to 
arms, and to the God of hosts, is all that is left us." 

REFERENCES. 

Fiske, The American Revohdiun, Vol. 1; Howard, The Preliminaries 
of the Revolution; Trevelyan, The American Revolution; Fisher, The 



126 CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 

American Revolution; Sloane, The French War and the Revolution; Chan- 
ning, History of the United States, Nol. Ill; Tyler, A Ldterary History oj 
the American Revolution, Vol. 1. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. George the Third. Fiske, TJie American Revolution, Vol. I, 38-45. 

2. How the Americans Resisted the Stamp Act. Fiske, The American 
Revolution, Vol. I, 21-27. 

3. Benjamin Franklin's Examination by the House of Commons. 
Hart, American History Told by Conteni'poraries, Vol. II, 407-411. 

4. Samuel Adams Makes up His Mind. Fiske, The American Revo- 
lution, Vol. I, 54-57. 

6. The Story of the Boston Massacre. Fiske, The American Revo- 
lution, Vol. I, 65-72. 

6. How the Tea Question Was Discussed in the Newspapers. Tyler, 
A Literary History of the Revolution, Vol. I, 251-257. 

7. The Boston Tea Party. Fiske, The American Revolution, Vol. 
I, 85-93. 

8. The Five Intolerable Acts. Fiske, The American Revohdion, 
Vol. I, 93-97. 

9. John Adams's Account of the First Continental Congress. Hart, 
American History Told by Cordemporaries, Vol. II, 434-439. 

10. Patrick Henry's Most Famous Speech. Tyler, Patrick Henry, 
128-152. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: O'Reilly, Crispus Atlucks; Holmes, A Ballad of the Boston 
Tea-Party; Francis Hopkinson, The Daughter's Rebellion; Thomas 
Paine, Liberty Tree; Benjamin Franklin, The Mother Country. 

Stories: Cooke, Stories of the Old Dominion; Doctor Vandyke; The 
Virginia Comedians; Hawthorne, Septimius Felton; Cooper, Lionel 
Lincoln; Sedgwick, The Limvoods; Devereux, From Kingdom to Colony; 
Kenyon, Won in War Time. 

Biographies: Tyler, Patrick Henry; Hosmer, Samuel Adams; Still6, 
John Dickinson; Morse, Benjamin Franklin; Frankhn, Autobiography. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. What is a democracy? Was England a democracy in 1763? Is it 
a democracy now? What countries were included in the British empire 
in 1763? 

2. Why did the colonies object to a British standing army in America? 
Is a standing army dangerous to the liberties of the people? Why? 



REFERENCES 127 

3. Are women and children who cannot vote represented in our law- 
making bodies? What is meant by "public ophiion"? If you wanted to 
get all the people in your toun to agree- upon some important matter, how 
would you go about it? 

4. Why is mob violence an unwise way of attacking a wrong? 

5. Why would it be unjust to take colonists accused of wrongdoing 
to England for trial? 

6. Did the men who threw the tea overboard do right? Why? Why 
was it difficult to get the colonies to unite in defense of their rights? 

7. fVhat prominent Englishmen championed the cause of the colonists 
in Parhament? What is meant by "the rights of Englishmen"? Was 
there any actual suffering in America due to British tyranny? How far 
were the people of England to blame for British aggression upon American 
rights? 

8. Who were the most important American leaders between 1763 
and 1775? Were the Americans justified in rebelling against England? 
Why? 



CHAPTER VII 



The War of the Revolution 



The Beginning of the War.— Early in 1775, General Gage, 

the British commander in Boston, was ordered to arrest Samuel 

The story of Adams and John Hancock, the patriot leaders, and send them 

Lexington to England for trial. On the night of April 18th, Gage sent 

eight hundred 
troops to Lexing- 
ton with orders 
to seize Adams 
and Hancock, who 
were staying in 
that town, and 
then to push on to 
Concord and cap- 
ture or destroy the 
military stores 
which the colonists 
had been collect- 
ing there. Warned 
by Paul Revere, 
whose midnight 
ride from Boston 
is finely described 
in Longfellow's 
well-known poem, 
Adams and Han- 
cock escaped, and 
when the British soldiers reached Lexington, at sunrise, 
they were confronted by about fifty minute-men under Captain 
John Parker. "Disperse, ye villains!" shouted Major Pitcairn, 
as he rode up at the head of the British troops. "Stand 
your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon," said Captain Parker 
to his men, "but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." 
The British fire at Lexington slew eight of our minute-men. 
The fieht wounded ten, and dispersed the remainder. The British then 
Concord pressed on to Concord, where they destroyed such miUtary stores 

128 




Old North Church, Boston 
" Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry tower of the Old 
North Church." 



BEGINNING OF THE WAR 



129 



as had not been hidden or carried away, and skirmished with 
some mihtia at the bridge over the Concord River. It was of 
this fight that Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of our greatest 
men of letters, who afterward hved in Concord, wrote: 

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
Here once the embattled farmers stood 

And fired the shot heard round the world." 




In the meantime companies of minute-men came swarming 
in from all the neighboring towns. Realizing their danger, the 
British began to retreat toward Boston. From behind every 
rock, clump of trees, and 
bit of rising ground along 
their line of march, a deadly 
fire was poured upon them. 
The red-coats fell thick and 
fast and their force was 
saved from complete de- 
struction only by the timely 
arrival of Lord Percy with 
heavy reenforcements. The 
running fight continued all 
the afternoon, and at night- 
fall the harried British 
were glad to find shelter 
under the protection of the guns of their fleet in Boston harbor. 

The victorious colonists encamped before Boston. All 
New England rose as the news of the British attack at Lexington 
and Concord was carried far and wide. John Stark came at 
the head of the New Hampshii-e minute-men, and Nathanael 
Greene led the militia of Rhode Island. In less than two days 
Israel Putnam rode into camp with the news that the men of 
Connecticut were on the march. Before a week passed sixteen 
thousand "embattled farmers" had gathered before the British 
fines at Boston. The war of the Revolution had begun. 

Meanwhile the news of Lexington and Concord was speed- 
ing far beyond the borders of New England. Swift riders 
carried it to New York and Pennsylvania, to Virginia and the 
9 



The retreat 

from 

Concord 



"Disperse, Ye Villains!" 



The siege 
of Boston 
begun 



The Revolu- 
tionary 
rising 



130 



THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



far south, and to the remote settlements in the valleys of the 
Blue Ridge and the AUeghanies. A party of hunters in the 
wilderness of Kentucky named the site of their camp Lexington 
in honor of the town where the first blow was struck for freedom. 
Everywhere the people were filled with wrath at the action of 
the British. Troops were raised and the patriot party in the 
various colonies began to drive out their British governors 
and to take the government into their own hands. In Virginia 
George Washington declared that Americans must choose be- 
tween war and slavery. 




The Vicinity of Boston 



While the news that war had begun was spreading over the 
country, the second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia 
The second on May 10, 1775. The Adamses of Massachusetts, Dickinson 
Continental ^j^^j Franklin of Pennsylvania, Patrick Henry and George 
Washington of Virginia, and the prominent leaders in all the 
other colonies were there. This Congress was our first national 
government. It adopted the soldiers who were encamped 
before Boston as its own, borrowed money to buy supplies for 
them, and most important of all, appointed George Washington 
to be their commander. In accepting this position Washington 
refused to take a penny of pay beyond his actual expenses for 
his services to his country. 



BEGINNING OF THE WAR 



131 



But before Washington reached the army tne first great 
battle of the war had been fought. During the night of June 
16th the Americans under Colonel Prescott began to fortify The battle of 
Bunker Hill, northwest of Boston. If they were not quickly Bunker Hill 
driven from this position, the American guns on the hilltop 
commanding Boston would soon make it impossible for the 
British to remain in that city. Three times the British troops 




The Invasion of Canada 

bravely assaulted the American intrenchments. Twice they 
were driven back with dreadful slaughter by the deadly fire of 
the colonial marksmen. But the British gallantly came on a 
thu'd time, and when the ammimition of the Americans was all 
gone the colonial troops were forced from the field. 

The battle of Bunker Hill was a dearly bought victory for 
the British. More than one-third of their attacking force had 
fallen in the fight. The British began to realize that it was 



132 



THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



going to be a difficult task to conquer the Americans, whose 
fighting quahties they had professed to despise. The Americans 
were greatly elated by their good showing. Nathanael Greene 
said, "I wish we could sell them another hill at the same 
price." 

When Washington reached the army before Boston,, he 

found nearly sixteen thousand untrained and poorly armed 

Washington men. He spent several months in organizing and drilling his 

takes Boston troops and in procuring cannon and ammunition. At the 

beginning of March, 1776, 
he felt strong enough to 
strike a telling blow at 
the British in Boston. He 
began by seizing and forti- 
fying Dorchester Heights, 
which overlook the city 
from the south. The British 
saw that they must either 
drive Washington from this 
position, which commanded 
Boston, or give up the city. 
Remembering Bunker Hill, 
they chose the latter alter- 
native and, embarking their 
army on board their fleet, 
they sailed away to Halifax. 
Not a British soldier was 
left upon the soil of New 
England. 

On May 10, 1775, the 
very day that the second 
Continental Congress met 
in Philadelphia, Ethan Allen 
and Benedict Arnold, with a small force, surprised and captured 
the fortress at Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. This bold 
stroke gave the Americans a much-needed supply of cannon and 
helped open the way to Canada. Some months later. General 
Richard Montgomery invaded Canada by way of Lake Cham- 
plain, captured Montreal, and advanced on Quebec. At the 
same time Benedict Arnold led another expedition into Canada 




The 

American 
invasion of 
Canada 



The Death of Montgomery 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 



133 



pendence 



through the woods of Maine. Montgomery and Arnold united 
their forces before Quebec, and on the last day of 1775, they 
attempted to storm that city. The gallant Montgomery was 
killed at the head of his men, Arnold was seriously wounded, 
and the assault failed. In the spring of 1776, the Americans 
were driven out of Canada and the attempt to unite that 
province to the thirteen colonies to the southward ended in 
utter failure. 

The Declaration of Independence. — When the Revolution- 
ary War began there was no widespread desire for independence 
in America. The Growing 

colonists took up \mmm^mi^mmSm^^^mmmm^^^^^Mi toward inde- 
arms to defend 
their rights as 
Englishmen. But 
a year of war 
wrought a great 
change in theii* 
feeling toward the 
mother country. 
When George the 
Third scorned 
their last petition, 
declared them 
rebels, made war 
upon them, and 
even hired thou- 
sands of Hessian 
soldiers in Ger- 
many to over- 
whelm them, pa- 
triotic Americans 
quickly lost all 
feeling of loyalty 
to him. Their ex- 
perience in seizing 

the governments in the various colonies, and in organizing the 
Continental Congress, made the American people feel that 
they were quite able to manage their own governments. 
Common Sense, a pamphlet by Thomas Paine which was widely 




The Committee — Franklin, Jefferson, Livingston, Adams 

and Sherman — Considering the Declaration of 

Independence 



134 



THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



adopted 




VyeJ^/^^t^y^^ 



read, did much to intensify the growing desire for independence. 
In this pamphlet Paine declared that "the blood of the slain, 
the true interest of the continent, and the great distance between 
England and America all cry, 'Tis time to part." By the 
spring of 1776, the patriot leaders saw clearly that they had no 
choice except abject submission to the demands of Great 
Britain or a declaration of independence. They had no thought 
of submission. 

Virginia led in the work of separation from the mother 

country. On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, one of the 

Inde- delegates from that colony, arose in the Continental Congress 

?^!!ffi!f^ and moved, " That these United Colonies are, and of right ought 

to be, free and independent 
States." This motion was 
promptly seconded by John 
Adams of Massachusetts. 
After some debate it was 
decided to postpone action 
upon Lee's motion for three 
weeks in order to learn more 
fully the wishes of the peo- 
ple in the matter. At the 
same time a committee 
headed by Thomas Jefferson 
was appointed to draw a 
declaration of independence. 
By July 1st many of 
the states had instructed 
their delegates to vote for 
independence. On that day 
Lee's motion was taken up 
and the next day it was 
passed. The Congress be- 
gan inunediately to consider 
the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, which Jefferson's committee had reported, and on 
July 4th the Declaration was adopted. Ever since 1776 we have 
celebrated the Fourth of July as the birthday of the nation. 

The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas 
Jefferson. A few slight changes in its wording were suggested 










^. 



ry^' 



5 J?.JC^J^J. 



Some of thfe Signatures to the Declaration 
of Independence 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 



135 



by John Adams and Benjamin Frankiin who were members of TheDeclara- 
the committee of which Jefferson was chairman. After its ^^°^ 
adoption, the Declaration of Independence was carefully copied 
upon parchment and, some time later, it was signed by fifty-six 
members of the Congress. The original parchment is now in 
the department of state at Washington. 

This immortal document consists of three parts: A state- 
ment of the political principles upon which the new nation 




The Declaration of Independence Announced to the People 



was founded; a long list of charges against the king of Great 
Britain; and the declaration that "these colonies are, and of 
right ought to be, Free and Independent States." The declara- 
tion closes with these noble words, "For the support of this 
declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine 
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our 
fortunes, and our sacred honor." 

In the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence 
the fundamental principle of democratic government is clearly 



136 



THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



The funda- 
mental 
principle of 
democracy 



Rejoicing by 
the people 



Divided 
opinion in 
Ajnerica 



stated by Jefferson in one great sentence, — a sentence that 
ought to be committed to memory by every young American. 
It is as follows: 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident — that all men are created 
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 
rights; that among these are Ufe, hberty, and the pursuit of happiness; 
that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, 
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever 
any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right 
of the people to alter or aboUsh it, and to institute new government, laying 
its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, 
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." 

Everywhere the Declaration of Independence was received 
with joy by the people, who gathered in great crowds to hear 
it read. In Philadelphia the Liberty Bell, which may still be 
seen in Independence Hall, rang out the good news to all the 
land. In all the chief towns the militia paraded, the drums 
rolled, cannon roared, and the day of rejoicing ended with a 
feast and a great bonfire in the evening. 

The Loyalists or Tories. — The Declaration of Independence 
compelled every American to choose between loyalty to the 
king of England and allegiance to the new nation. This was 
a hard choice to many of the colonists who loved their mother 
country in spite of her treatment of them. There had been 
wide differences of opinion among the people ever since the 
war began. Many there were, as we have seen, who were 
resolved to stand up for their rights at any cost. A few ap- 
proved the conduct of the British govermnent. A much larger 
number disliked the British policy in America but were unwilling 
to oppose it by any but peaceful means. They wished to 
remain loyal Englishmen. Some, like the Quakers who hated 
war, wished to remain neutral in the struggle. Others cared 
little for any cause except their own selfish interests, but were 
shocked by the lawlessness of revolution and feared the loss 
of their property in the war. A very large part of the men of 
wealth and education were opposed to separation from England, 
and many of their poorer and more ignorant neighbors were 
influenced by them. These loyahsts, or Tories, as the patriots 
called them, were found in all the colonies, but they were 



The LiBEKTY Bell's First Note — 1753 
The scene is in the foundry of Pass and Stow, Philadelphia, 
in 1753. The tone of the newly cast bell is about to be tested. 
John Pass, one of the firm, stands at the right. Isaac Norris, in 
the grey coat, the Chairman of the Committee appointed to buy 
the bell for the State House, is talking to Benjamin Franklin. The 
young lady, a relative of Isaac Norris, is about to strike the bell for 
its first note, which proved to be beautifully clear and resonant. 



THE LOYALISTS 137 

especiallj^ numerous in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
the Carolinas, and Georgia. 

While the loyalists were numerous, they failed to make 
much headway against the better organized and more aggres- 
sive Whigs, as the members of the patriot party were called. The work of 
In North Carolina sixteen hundred Tories who took up arms in ^^^ Tories 
defense of the king's cause were defeated and dispersed at 
Moore's Creek, early in 1776. In the other colonies the Tories 
met a similar fate or were disarmed to prevent fighting. 

A young Pennsylvania Tory wrote in his diary, "This day 
I left my father's house because I would not be a traitor to my 
king and country." The same motive led many young Tories 
like him to run away from home and enlist in the British army. 
In New York and the Carolinas, whole regiments of Tories were 
enlisted. It has been estimated that at least fifty thousand 
Americans served in the British army or navy or in the loyalist 
militia during the war. 

The Tories >vho stayed at home were even more dangerous 
to the success of the American cause than were those who 
joined the British army. They spied upon the American troops, Their treat- 
gave information to the British, and sold them much-needed ™^*}* ^y ^^^ 
supplies. It is no wonder that the Tories were hated and ^^^ 
harshly treated by the Whigs. Even before the war began 
they were hooted and jeered and often roughly handled by 
mobs. After the Declaration of Independence was adopted 
their conduct became treason against their country and they 
were then fined, imprisoned, deprived of their property and, 
in some cases, banished to distant parts of the country. In a 
few instances, Tories were put to death after a trial for treason. 
In New York and the Carolinas the bitter hatred between 
Whig and Tory neighbors made the war in those states espe- 
cially savage and merciless. 

One cannot read about the Tories without realizing that 
the American Revolution was a civil war in which the patriot 
party led by Washington and his associates was fighting, not The Revolu- 
only against England, but also against a large loyalist faction *\°? ^^^ * 
at home. The mother country was divided somewhat in the 
same way, for while the king and his ministers were trying to 
conquer the rebellious colonies, no small part of the English • 
people actually sympathized with the American cause, 



138 



THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



attack 



The War in the Middle States. — The only way in which 
the British could win the Revolutionary War was to attack 
The British and disperse the American armies. After careful preparation 
plan of they began this attack in 1776. Because of the military im- 
portance of that place, the first blow was struck at New York. 
By the capture of the city of New York the British hoped to 
secure control of the Hudson River and thus cut the country 
in two, isolate New England, which was looked upon as the 
most rebellious section, and then quickly crush all opposition. 




Washington's Headquarters near Newburg on the Hudson 
The American army was disbanded here at the close of the Revolutionary War. 



Washington had foreseen this plan of the British, and 
when their fleet and army reached the vicinity of New York in 
The British the summer of 1776, he was there ready to oppose them. Gen- 
n^^"y u ^^^^ Howe, who led the British army, attacked and defeated 
Washington in the battle of Long Island and soon captured 
the city of New York. Washington retreated slowly noi'thward 
on the east side of the Hudson River, fighting the pursuing 
British at Harlem Heights and White Plains. When Washing- 
ton reached the Highlands of the Hudson, the British gave up 
the pursuit of his army, but strengthened their hold upon New 



WAR IN THE MIDDLE STATES 



139 



York by capturing Fort Washington and Fort Lee which 
guarded the Hudson just above that city. 

It was during this campaign that Captain Nathan Hale, 
who had been a school teacher in Connecticut before the war, 
went into New York to obtain information for Washington Nathan Hale 
and was caught by the British and put to death as a spy. His 
countrymen have never forgotten that when Hale was led out 
to his execution he said, "I only regret that I have but one 
life to lose for my country." 




The Battle of Trenton 

In the fall of 1776 the British began to overrun New Jersey. 
Leaving part of his force to prevent the British from ascending 
the Hudson River, Washington marched through northern The retreat 
Jersey and threw his remaining troops across the line of the 1^ ^^^ 
British advance toward Philadelphia. He was not strong enough 
to give battle so he slowly fell back, delaying the British as 
much as he could. In December Washington was driven 
across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. 

The British were unable to cross the Delaware in pursuit 
because Washington had seized all the boats for many miles 
along the river. Accordingly, detachments of their army went The darkest 
into camp in various New Jersey towns and waited for ice to hour of the 
form on the river so that they could cross and continue the 



140 



THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



Trenton and 
Princeton 



pursuit. It was the darkest hour of the Revolution for the 
Americans. Their army was rapidly dwindling away. Wash- 
ington said that unless help came soon the game was up. 
But he did not despair and when hope seemed almost gone he 
boldly struck a blow that greatly changed the face of affairs. 
On Christmas night, 1776, in the midst of a blinding snow- 
storm, Washington crossed the Delaware nine miles above Tren- 
ton, marched rapidly upon that town and, in the early morning, 
surprised and captured a force of one thousand Hessians who 
were quartered there. This success gave new courage to the 
Americans and brought more men to the army. A few days 
later Washington again crossed the Delaware, eluded Corn- 
wallis, who led a British force against him, defeated another 
British detachment at Princeton, and then marching northward, 
went into winter quarters at Morristown in the hill country 
of northern New Jersey. With Washington in this strong 
position the British were compelled to abandon most of New 
Jersey. They held only the city of New York and its immediate 
vicinity. 

The year 1777 proved to be the great battle year of the 
Revolution. It was the British plan to have the army in New 
The British York under General Howe advance up the Hudson, while an- 
plan in 1777 other British army, led by General Burgoyne, came from 
Canada by way of Lake Champlain and the upper Hudson to 
join Howe's force. It was hoped that these united armies, hold- 
ing the line of the Hudson, would make short work of the 
American rebels. This British plan was very good, but for- 
tunately for the American cause. General Howe did not carry 
out his part of it. 

Early in 1777, Howe decided to capture Philadelphia, the 
rebel capital, before co-operating with Burgoyne. This was a 
fatal mistake on his part. Howe first tried to march across 
New Jersey to Philadelphia, but Washington posted his army 
PWladelphia ^*^ skilfully that the British general dared neither attack him 
nor advance, leaving him in his rear. Howe then put the greater 
part of his army on his ships and sailed away. For several 
anxious weeks his destination was unknown. At last the news 
came that the British had landed at the Elk River, near the 
head of Chesapeake Bay, and were about to advance upon 
Philadelphia from the southwest. 



Howe's 

campaign 

against 



WAR IN THE MIDDLE STATES 



141 






^2 ^%^ /7%^ 



2^ 



/I 



'p-0'2>-'^'. 



7£^^ — c^-j^ x^:^. 







■^^2.-^.^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^:e^z^^^^ ^ ,#^^2^^^ 




A Letter Written by Washington on his Forty-fifth Birthday 
This, to the contractor who monopolized the provisioning of the army shows that the 
sufferings at Morristown were much like those at VaUey Forge 



142 



THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



As soon as Washington heard where Howe had landed, he 

quickly marched his army through Philadelphia and hurrying 

The battle of on, confronted the British in northern Delaware. Then, slowly 

Brandywine falling back, Washington took a strong position behind the 

Brandywine Creek in southeastern Pennsylvania. Here the 

British attacked 
him on September 
11, 1777, and the 
battle of Brandy- 
wine was fought. 
After a stubborn 
resistance, Wash- 
ington was driven 
from the field, and 
about two weeks 
later the British 
occupied Philadel- 
phia. 

The British 
were scarcely set- 
The British WSSLj^^ .^tW'^'" '^ ^m J^^^^M *^^^^ ^^ Philadelphia 
in Philadel- WBKSl./^^ -^^ "T'^^'^S ^^^'^^^'^ Washington 

P ^^^MiS^.^. _ . jJIh . - .\,^^sm attacked them furi- 

ously at German- 
town, on October 
4th, and was beaten 
off only after the 
most desperate 
fighting. After sev- 
eral weeks spent in capturing the American forts on the 
Delaware River below Philadelphia and in bringing their fleet up 
to the city, the British settled down in the ''rebel capital " for the 
winter. Washington watched them from his camp upon the hills 
at Valley Forge, about twenty miles up the Schuylkill River. 

While Howe was carrying on his campaign against Phila- 
delphia, General Burgoyne 1(h1 a British army from Canada to 
Burgoyne's Lake Champlain, captured Ticonderoga, and slowly made his 
campaign ^^^y across the country to the Hudson River. In the meantime 
another British expedition under General St. Leger had entered 
the Mohawk Valley from Oswego on Lake Ontario; but the 




Lafayette Wounded at the Battle of Brandywine 
This French marquis joined Washington's staff in the 
summer of 1777. 



WAR IN THE MIDDLE STATES 



143 



gallant resistance of the garrison at Fort Stanwix and the 
stubborn fighting of the American militia under General 
Herkimer at Oriskany had checked its advance and, a little 
later, an American force 
under Benedict Arnold 
drove St. Leger back to 
Canada. Another expedi- 
tion which Burgoyiie sent 
into Vermont was almost 
destroyed at Bennington, 
by the New England mil- 
itia under John Stark. 
Finally Burgoyne's invad- 
ing arni}^ was stopped and 
turned back by two battles 
fought near Saratoga. 
With his retreat to Canada 
cut off by the militia, 
which came swarming in 
from New England, 
Burgoyne was forced to 
surrender his army to the. 
American, General Gates, 
at Saratoga, October 17, 

1777. This loss of an 
entire army was a severe 
l)low to the British and 
a turning point in the war. 

The winter of 1777- 

1778, which Washington 
spent with his army at 
Valley Forge, was marked 
l)y the greatest privation 
and suffering of the entire 
war. The troops were 
half-clad and often scarce- 
ly fed at all. There was much sickness in the camp, and 
many soldiers died before spring came. Yet no one thought 
of giving up. Washington said, ''Naked and starving as 
they are, we cannot enough admire the incomparable pa- 




*^-^ 



_^ Washing-ton 
_ _ Burgoyne's 

. Howe's 

St.Leger's 



The War in the Middle States 



Washington 
at Valley 
Forge 



144 



THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



tience and fidelity of the soldiery." Valley Forge is the greatest 
shrine of patriotism in all our land. Its name "will never 
cease to be associated with the memory of sufferings quietly 
and steadfastly borne, but not endured in vain," If possible, 
every young American ought to pay it a reverent visit. 

When the spring of 1778 brought warmer weather and 
more comfort to the patriots at Valley Forge, much time was 
devoted to drill and to the reorganization of the army. Baron 




Washington and a Committee of Congress at Valley Forge 



Von Steuben, a German soldier who joined the American army 
at Valley Forge, rendered invaluable service as drillmaster. 
The news that France had formed an alliance with the new 
American republic, which reached Washington and his men 
before they left Valley Forge, gave them renewed hope and 
confidence for the struggle yet before them. 

When the British learned that a French fleet and army 

were crossing the Atlantic to help the Americans, they aban- 

Sum 1o^^ doned Philadelphia and started to return to New York. No 

New York sooner did Washington learn of this movement than he broke 



HELP FROM FRANCE 145 

camp at Valley Forge and started in hot pursuit of the British. 
He overtook them at Monmouth, New Jersey, where an in- 
decisive battle was fought. The British continued their retreat 
to New York, which they reached in safety, and Washington 
returned to his old position near the Hudson River. 

During the remainder of the war, Washington watched the 
British in New York, but there was little fighting in the middle 
states. In 1779, General Sullivan was sent to central New York The closing 
to punish the Iroquois Indians, who had massacred many years of the 
settlers on the frontiers of New York and Pennsylvania. The jJortlT ^ 
same year General Anthony Wayne, one of the best fighters 
in the American army, gallantly stormed Stony Point on the 
Hudson River, at the point of the bayonet. In 1780, Benedict 
Arnold, who had fought with the utmost heroism in Canada 
and at Saratoga, turned traitor and attempted to betray West 
Point to the British, but without success. None of these events, 
however, were of great importance in deciding the outcome 
of the war. 

Help from France.— From the beginning of the Revolution 
France had sympathized with the Americans. French states- 
men remembered the long contest of their country with England French 

for the control of North America, and were delighted at the sympathy 

. . witn the 

prospect of the breaking up of the British empire. France Americans 

had a despotic government at this time, but many young 
Frenchmen were enthusiastic over the right to govern them- 
selves, for which the Americans were fighting, and already were 
dreaming of winning it for their own country. Indeed, not 
many years later, their dream was to be realized, and democracy 
was to take the place of the despotic rule of the king in 
France. 

French sympathy with the struggling Americans was 
shown in many ways. The French government secretly loaned 
money to the American agents in Paris and furnished arms Lafayette 
and supplies for Washington's army. In their enthusiasm for 
liberty, young French noblemen offered their services to the 
new republic across the sea. The most famous of these French- 
men was the Marquis of Lafayette, who was made a major- 
general in the American army and rendered services of the 
greatest value to our country. Nor must we forget the German 
soldier, De Kalb, and the Pole, Pulaski, both of whom came to 
10 



146 



THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



The French 
aUiance 



America from France and fell in battle while fighting gallantly 
for our independence. 

In 1776, Benjamin Franklin was sent to Paris to plead for 
the recognition of the new nation. At this time Franklin's 
Franklin in writings and scientific discoveries made him the best known 
France man in America. No one except Washington did more to gain 
the independence of the United States. Franklin was received 
with enthusiasm in France where his shrewd wisdom, kind 
heart, and simple manners charmed the people whom he met 
and won them, heart and soul, to our cause. 

For some time the 
French government hes- 
itated to recognize the new 
republic across the Atlantic 
for fear that it might not 
be able to make good its 
declaration of indepen- 
dence. When the news of 
Burgoyne's defeat and sur- 
render reached Paris the 
people rejoiced as if over 
a great French victory. 
The French government 
hesitated no longer. Early 
in 1778, France recognized 
the independence of the 
United States and made a 
treaty of friendship and 
alliance with the new 
nation. It was agreed that 
if England should make war 
upon France, as she was now practically sure to do, the 
United States and France would imite their forces against 
England, and that neither of them would make peace without 
the consent of the other. 

Soon after the French alliance was made, Great Britain 
offered her former colonists all that they had asked before 
the war if they would desert the French and return to their 
old allegiance. This offer came too late and was rejected with 
scorn bv the Americans who were now more confident than 




From tlie portrait in the ('nidtol oj Pennsylvania. 
Benjamin Franklin 



BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN NAVY 147 

ever that with French aid they were sure to win in their struggle 
for independence. 

The alUance with France was of inestimable value to the 
American cause. France now openly loaned our government 
money that was sorely needed, and sent fleets and armies to Our debt to 
our aid. We might possibly have achieved our independence France 
without this help, but it is certain that the aid of France short- 
ened the Revolutionary War by several years. We owe France 
a debt of gratitude which w^e ought never to forget, and which 
we began to repay When American soldiers went to fight, side 
b}^ side with the French, in the Great War, in 1917. 

The Beginnings of the American Navy, — The complete 
control of the sea, which the British possessed at the opening 
of the Revolution, put the coast towns of America at the mercy British 
of their ships of war. In 1775, Falmouth on the coast of Maine attacks upor 
was burned b}^ the British. In 1776, a British fleet threatened 
Charleston, South Carolina, but was beaten off by the deadly 
fire from Fort Moultrie which the Americans had built to 
guard the entrance to Charleston harbor. Later in the war, 
Fairfield and Norwalk, on the coast of Connecticut, were 
burned by British marauders who came by sea. 

The numerous colonial trading ships were likewise in 
great peril from the cruisers of the British navy and, during 
the course of the war, many of them were captured. Without American 
a strong navy of its own about the only thing that the American P"vateers 
government could do in retaliation for these losses was to 
authorize private citizens to arm their own ships and prey 
upon English commerce. Before the close of the Revolution 
these American privateers captured hundreds of English 
merchant vessels, and daring American captains even carried 
this kind of warfare to the waters about Great Britain itself. 

From the beginning of the war the need of an American 
navy was evident, and before the close of 1775, the Continental 
Congress took the first steps toward forming one. Early in Our need o 
1776, Captain Esek Hopkins hoisted the first flag ever flown ^ 'lavy 
upon an American man-of-war. It was a yellow silk banner 
bearing the figures of a pine tree and a rattlesnake, with the 
motto, "Don't tread on me." 



navy 



John Paul Jones was the most famous captain in our early j^j^ p^^j 
^ Jones was a Scotch sailor who had settled in Virginia jones 



148 THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 

some years before the Revolution began. He entered the navy 
at its beginning and from the first proved to be an officer of 
great skill and daring. In 1778, Captain Jones crossed the 
Atlantic with the American ship, Ranger, prowled about the 
coasts of Great Britain, took several merchant prizes, captured 
a British warship which carried more guns than the Ranger, 
and even burned some of the shipping in a port on the coast 
of England. 




Action between the "Bonhomme Richard" and "Serapis" 

After these daring exploits, Jones went to France, which, 

as we have seen, had now formed an alliance with the United 

The great . States. Here he was given the command of a little squadron 

fh^ T?^^^*i °^ with which to cruise off the English coast. Jones named his 

tion flagship the BonJiomme Richard. This French name means 

"Goodman Richard," and was given in honor of Benjamin 

Franklin, the author of "Poor Richard's Almanac." During the 

night of September 23, 1779, Captain Jones in the Bonhomme 

Richard fought the most terrific naval action of the Revolution 

with the Serapis, a British warship which he encountered off 

the east coast of England. After an hour's fighting, during 

which the Americans lost heavily, the two ships came together. 

There was a moment's lull in the firing and the EngUsh captain 



The Ship that Sunk in Victory— 1779 
During the night of September 23, 1779, the most terrific mivsl 
action of the Revolution was fought off the Enghsh coast between 
the American ship "Bonhomme Richard," Captain Jolin Paul 
Jones, and the British ship "Serapis," Captain Richard Pearson. 
Jones captured the "Serapis," but his own ship was so cut to pieces 
by the British fire that it sunk the next morning. Captain Jones 
and his surviving crew sailed away in the ship they had taken. In 
the picture, Captains Jones and Pearson are watching, from the 
deck of the "Serapis," the victorious American ship as it slowly 
settled beneath the waves. Captain Jones saj^s: "No one was left 
aboard the 'Richard' but our dead. The very last vestige mortal 
eyes ever saw of the 'Bonhomme Richard' was the defiant waving of 
iier unconquered flag as she weiit down. And as I luul given them 
the grand old ship for their sepulchre, I now bequeathed to nn 
immortal dead the flag they had so desperately defended for their 
winding sheet." 



THE WAR IN THE SOUTH 149 

called out, "Have you struck your colors?" "I have not yet 
begun to fight," was the defiant reply of Captain Jones. The 
awful fight went on with the ships lashed together until the 
brave English captain, standing almost alone among the killed 
and wounded upon his deck, was forced to surrender. The 
Bonhomme Richard was so cut to pieces by the British fire 
that it sank the next morning, but Captain Jones managed 
to bring the ship he had captured into a port in Holland. 

After the French alliance was formed, the navy of France 
gave valuable assistance to the American cause. Later, Spain 
and Holland were drawn into the war on the side of France. Aid from th< 
During the closing years of the Revolution, the fleets of all French navy 
these countries were arrayed against the British navy, but in 
this great naval contest, the United States with its few ships 
of war, of necessity, played little part. 

The War in the South.— By the fall of 1778, New York 
City and Newport, Rhode Island, were the only places in the 
United States held by the British, and Newport was given up The British 
the next year. The British plan to secure control of the Hudson carry the waj 
River,and thus divide and conquer the northern states, had failed ° ® °" 
utterly. The British now resolved to carry the war to the far 
South. Even if they lost the North, it would be well worth 
while to regain that region with its rich exports of tobacco, 
rice, and naval stores. They were beginning to think that 
"half a loaf was better than no bread." 

Near the close of 1778, the British seized Savannah and 
soon recovered all Georgia, which was then the weakest of 
the southern states. It was in the British plan to move north- Fighting in 
ward, conquering the states, one by one. At first they met Georgia 
with little success. In 1779, the American General Lincoln, 
with the aid of a French fleet, attacked the British at Savannah, 
but failed to take that city. The gallant Polish patriot, Count 
Pulaski, who had come to fight for freedom in America, was 
slain in the assault upon Savannah. 

In 1780, the British were heavily reenforced, and advanced 
into South Carolina. General Lincoln unwisely allowed his 
army to be shut up in Charleston and was quickly forced to The British 
surrender. This was the most terrible disaster that overtook overrun 
the Americans during the entire war. There was no longer Carolina 
an American army in the South. Francis Marion and other 



150 



THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



partisan leaders who lurked in the swamps, with small bands of 
men, bravely kept up the fight, but they could not prevent 
the British from overrunning the whole state. The people of 




The Campaigns in the South 

the Carolinas were much divided in sentiment. Some of the 

Tories now took up arms, and soon South Carolina suffered 

all the horrors of civil war. 

Gates^aT*^^ After the loss of Cleneral Lincoln's army at Charleston, 

Camden General Gates, "the hero of Saratoga," was sent to organize 



THE WAR IN THE, SOUTH 151 

and lead a new American force in the South. Gates soon 
showed that he did not deserve the high reputation which the 
splendid fighting of other men at Saratoga had won for him. 
When he attacked the British at Camden in South Carolina 
he was badly beaten and his army scattered. North Carolina 
was thus exposed to British attack, but just as the British 
General, Cornwallis, was advancing to occupy that state, he was 
turned back by the overwhelming defeat which the frontiersmen 
of the western border inflicted upon a detacliment of his troops 
at King's Mountain. This ended the fighting in 1780. 

After the disastrous defeat of General Gates at Camden, 
Nathanael Greene was sent to lead the American forces in the 
South. Next to Washington, Greene was the best soldier of Greene's 
the Revolution, and he was ably assisted in his first southern campaign in 
campaign by General Daniel Morgan, who served under him. 
This campaign opened early in 1781 with the inspiring victory 
which Morgan won at the Cowpens over a British cavalry 
force under Tarleton. Greene and Morgan were not yet strong 
enough to meet the main British army, so they retreated across 
North Carolina with Cornwallis in hot pursuit. At last Greene 
felt strong enough to fight, and turning back he met the British 
at Guilford Court House. An indecisive battle followed. 
Greene fell back, but the British were obliged to march to 
Wilmington, on the coast, to renew their supplies. Cornwallis 
then marched northward into Virginia. 

Instead of following Cornwallis to Virginia, Greene moved 
southward and began the task of driving the British detach- 
ments out of South Carolina. He was welcomed and assisted The recover 
b}' the patriot leaders of that state, and before the end of °^ ^^ ^°"^^ 
1780, the Americans recovered the far South and confined the 
British troops to the coast cities of Charleston and Savannah. 

When Cornwallis reached Virginia he w^as confronted by 
Lafayette with a small American force. The young Frenchman 
was not strong enough to give battle, but he marched hither The sur- 
and thither, successfully eluding all the British efforts to render at 
capture him. At last Cornwallis went into camp at Yorktown 
where he could keep in touch with the British fleet, upon which 
he depended for supplies. The tmiely arrival of a strong 
French fleet, which drove away the British ships and held 
Chesapeake Bay, gave Washington the opportunity for which 



152 



THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



The end of 
the war 



Terms of 
peace 



he had been waiting. With his own army and a strong force 
of French troops under Rochambeau, Washington hurried from 
his position near New York to Virginia and besieged Cornwalhs 
at Yorktown. After a desperate resistance, the British army 
was compelled to surrender, on October 19, 1781. The hard 
fighting of the Revolutionary War was over. 

The Treaty of Peace. — After the surrender of Cornwallis 
Great Britain lost all hope of conquering her rebellious American 

colonies. When Lord North, 
the prune minister of George 
III, heard of the surrender 
at Yorktown, he cried out, 
"O God, it is all over." 
Many of the English people 
had never really favored 
the war, and all of them 
had grown tired of it. Lord 
North resigned, and King 
George III was obUged to 
appoint ministers who would 
bring the war to an end. 

Benjamin Franklin, 
John Adams, and John Jay, 
three of the ablest men in 
America, were sent to talk 
over terms of peace with- 
the representatives of Eng- 
land. The meeting took 
place in Paris and the treaty, 
which was finally signed in 
1783, is called the Peace of 
Paris. By the treaty of Paris, Great Britain recognized the 
independence of the United States. It was agreed that the 
new nation should extend from the Atlantic Coast to the 
Mississippi River and from Canada and the Great Lakes on 
the north to the thirty-first parallel of ^ latitude on the south. 
Florida was restored to Spain, which had owned Louisiana, as 
the country west of the Mississippi was called, ever since 1763. 
Thus Spain became our neighbor on the south and west, and 
England retained Canada on the north. 




The Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown 



MEN OF THE REVOLUTION 153 

The Treaty of Paris also gave the Americans the right to 
fish upon the banks of Newfoundland, and provided that 
British merchants should have the right to collect debts which 
Americans owed them when the Revolution began. After the 
treaty was signed the last British troops were withdrawn from 
Savannah, Charleston, and New York. Before the close of 1783 
the American army was disbanded, and Washington resigned 
his commission and retired to his home at Mount Vernon. 

The Men of the Revolution. — We owe the freedom of our 
country to the men of the Revolution. In strength of character, 
in patriotic purpose, and in the iron will which held him stead- George 
fast to his purpose in spite of the most disheartening defeats Washington 
and discouragements, George Washington was easily foremost 
among all the men of his time. Our forefathers trusted and 
followed Washington in the darkest hours of the Revolution 
because they had implicit confidence in his integrity, his good 
judgment, his dauntless courage, and his miselfish devotion to 
his country. 

Second only to Washington in the value of their services 
were several other great soldiers of the Revolution. Foremost 
among them stood Nathanael Greene, who recovered the far Other 
South from the British. Knox and Sullivan were trusted military 
generals in Washington's army. Philip Schuyler prepared the 
way for the great victory at Saratoga, for which his successor, 
Gates, was unjustly credited. Anthony Wayne was a dashing 
leader who served from the beginning to the end of the war and 
was ever found where the battle raged most fiercely. Worthy 
to rank with Waj^ne were those gallant fighters, John Stark, the 
victor at Bennington; Nicholas Herkimer, the hero of Oriskany; 
Francis Marion, who kept the patriot cause alive during the 
dark days of defeat in South Carolina; Daniel Morgan, who 
well nigh destroyed the British force at the Cowpens ; and Paul 
Jones, who first made the Stars and Stripes respected upon the 
sea. Nor will Americans ever forget that noble young French- 
man, Lafayette, who unselfishly gave himself to the cause of 
liberty, and, as a general in our army, proved to have "an old 
man's head upon a young man's shoulders." 

In the value of their services, the statesmen of the Revolu- 
tion stand side by side with the military leaders. The determi- ^j.y 
nation to stand up for theii" rights at all costs, which led the statesmen 



154 



THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 



The courage 
and fidelity 
of the people 



colonists into the war, was due in no small measure to the 
fiery eloquence of Patrick Henry and the logical writings of 
Samuel Adams and John Dickinson. Thomas Jefferson will 
live forever as the author of the Declaration of Independence. 
Robert Morris, "the financier of the Revolution," gave his time 

and his fortune, without 
stint, to the service of 
his country. The value of 
Franklin's efforts in securing 
the French Alliance was 
inestimable. To the same 
wise old head, and to the 
sturdy and unyielding John 
Adams and John Jay, we 
are indebted for the favor- 
able terms of the Treaty 
of Peace. 

But the skill and valor 
of our generals and the 
wisdom of our statesmen 
would have been of little 
use without the support of 
the common people. The 
success of the Revolution 
was due to the private 
soldiers who marched and 
fought at Long Island and Saratoga and Yorktown, or starved 
and froze at Valley Forge. No less important was the steadfast 
patriotism of the citizens at home who supported the war. 
The "incomparable fidelity" of the soldiers and the citizens 
alike, through eight long and trying years, at last established 
the independence of the United States. 




John Dickinson 
One of the wisest statesmen of the Revolution 



REFERENCES. 

Van Tyne, The American Revolution; Carrington, Battles of the 
American Revolution; Tho histories of the Revohition and the histories 
of the United States mentioned in the references for Chapter VI, 



TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Story of Lexington and Concord. 
Revolution, I, 120-120, 



Fiske, The American 



REFERENCES 155 

2. The Battle of Bunker Hill. Fiske, The American Revolution, 

I, 136-146. 

3. The Declaration of Independence. Fiske, The American Revo- 
lution, I, 183-197. 

4. The Tories in the Revolution. Van Tyne, The American Revo- 
lution, 248-268. 

5. Woman's Work for the Soldiers in the Revolution. Hart, Ameri- 
can History Told by Contemporaries, II, 485-488. 

6. The Fight at Oriskany. Fiske, The American Revolution, I, 286-292. 

7. Life at Valley Forge. Hart, American History Told by Contem- 
poraries, II, 568-573. 

8. The Story of Arnold's Treason. Fiske, The American Revolution, 

II, 206-228. 

9. John Paul Jones's Greatest Fight. Fiske, The American Revolu- 
tion, II, 120-130. 

10. The Battle of King's Mountain. Roosevelt, The Winning of the 
West, II, 241-294. 

11. Cornwallis's Account of His Surrender at Yorktown. Hart, Ameri- 
can History Told by Contemporaries, II, 615-618. 

12. The Negotiations for Peace. Fiske, The Critical Period, 1-36. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE, 

Poems: Longfellow, I'aul Revere' s Ride; Hymn of the Moravian 
Nu7is of Bethlehem.; Whittier, Lexington; Emerson, The Concord Hymn; 
Read, The Rising; Bryant, The Green Mountain Boys; The Song of 
Marion's Men; Simms, The Swamp Fox; Pierpont, Warren's Address to 
the American Soldiers; Finch, Nathan Hale; Drake, The American Flag. 

Novels: Chambers, The Reckoning; Churchill, Richard Carvel; 
Ford, Janice Meredith; Frederic, In the Valley; Mitchell, Hugh Wynne; 
Cooper, The Pilot; The Spy; Brady, For Love of Country; Simms, The 
Partisan; Mellichampe; The Scout; Katharine Walton; The Forayers; 
The Eutaws. 

Biographies: Scudder, Washington; Carrington, Washington the 
Soldier; Morse, Benjamin Franklin; John Adams; Thomas Jefferson; 
Brooks, The True Story of Lafayette. 

Oration: At Valley Forge, June 19, 1878, by Henry Armitt Brown. 
This oration, which is published in the "Classics in the Grades" series by 
the Christopher Sower Company, ought to be read in every American 
school. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. What did Emerson mean when he said that the farmers at Concord 
fired a "shot heard round the world"? How was the news spread from 
place to place at the time of the Revolution? 



156 THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 

2. Why have Americans built a monument at Bunker Hill to com- 
memorate a defeat? 

3. Commit to memory the sentence in the Declaration of Independence 
beginning, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." 

4. How were the Tories treated during the Revolution? Was this 
treatment just? Was it expedient? 

5. Show how the War of the Revolution was influenced by the phy- 
sical geography of America. 

6. Who was to blame for the suffering at Valley Forge? Could these 
hardships have been avoided? 

7. Question for debate: Could the Americans have won their inde- 
pendence without the aid of France? 

8. Trace upon a map the route of Washington's army during the 
war. Locate Bennington, Oriskany, Morristown, Chad's Ford, Guil- 
ford Court House, Cowpens, Camden. 

9. Who was Israel Putnam? Joseph Warren? Colonel Prescott? 
Colonel Moultrie? "Light Horse Harry" Lee? Silas Deane? Charles 
Lee? John Andre? Count de Grassc? 



CHAPTER VIII 
The Beginnings of Our Government 

A Federal Government. — The United States is a nation 
composed of states. All of us who were born or naturalized 
in this country are citizens of the United States. At the same The states 
time, we are citizens of the state in which we live. In each of and the 
our states the people have set up a government which makes ^°^ 
and enforces laws for the protection of hfe and property, 
provides schools, builds roads, and serves the people of that 
state in many other ways. But we also owe obedience to a 
United States govermnent established by the people of the 
whole nation. The national government coins our money, 
carries the mail, maintains an army and navy, and does 
many other things to serve all the people. A government like 
ours, in which a part of the work of governing is done by the 
several states and a part by the nation as a whole, is- called 
federal. Let us see how a federal government grew up in our 
country. 

From Colonies to States. — During the colonial period, as 
we have already learned, governments somewhat like those in 
our states at the present time developed in each of the colonies. How the 
But these colonial governments had been set up in the first colonies 
place by the authority of England. In most of them the gover- ^^^^^ 
nor was appointed by the king or by a proprietor to whom the 
king had given the right to govern. When the Revolution began, 
these royal and proprietary governors were driven out of office. 
The people of each colony then took its government into their 
own hands and elected assemblies or conventions to manage 
public affairs. This arrangement, however, was only tem- 
porary. The people in each state soon felt the need of a perma- 
nent written constitution, and all the states, except Rhode 
Island and Connecticut, made such constitutions soon after the 
Declaration of Independence was adopted. In Rhode Island 
and Connecticut the people kept their colonial charters, under 
which they were practically free to manage their own affairs, 
and treated them as state constitutions. 

157 



158 



BEGINNINGS OF OUR GOVERNMENT 



What is a 
constitution? 



The first 
state govern- 
ments 



Growing 

more 

democratic 



Union 
necessary 
but difficult 



A constitution is the fundamental law which the people 
of a state or nation draw up and adopt when they form a 
permanent government. In this document the people provide 
for the election or appointment of the officers who are to govern 
them, state what powers these officers are to have, and estab- 
lish a way of getting rid of them if they neglect their duties or 
exercise power which has not been granted to them by the 
people. In brief, a constitution is a law by which the people 
establish and control their own government. A written consti- 
tution is very important to a free people, because it helps them 
to know their rights and to prevent any encroachment upon 
those rights by the men whom they have chosen to be their 
rulers. 

The first state governments were much like the colonial 
governments which had just been overthrown and, at the same 
time, they strongly resembled the governments found in our 
states at the present time. In each state there was an elected 
legislature which made the laws. In all of them, except Penn- 
sylvania and Georgia, this lawmaking body was made up of 
two houses. Each of the new states except Pennsylvania had 
a governor whose duty it was to enforce the law. In Pennsyl- 
vania, until 1790, the power to enforce the law was vested in 
an executive council of twelve members. Then, as now, there 
were judges in each state who interpreted the laws and applied 
them in cases which were brought before the courts. 

But the state governments which were set up during the 
Revolution were far less democratic than the governments of 
our states at present. Now the governors of all our states are 
elected by a direct vote of the people. Then the governors of 
some of the states were chosen by the state legislature. In our 
time the judges in most of the states are elected by popular 
vote. In those days all judges were appointed by the governors 
or by the legislatures. Now all men, and in many states the 
women too, have the right to vote. Then the suffrage was 
generally limited to property owners or tax payers. Our 
country has b(>en growing more democratic ever since it gained 
its independence. 

Our First National Government. — Our ways of living are 
very different from those of our Revolutionary ancestors. We 
read the news of the whole world in our daily papers and can 



OUR FIRST NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 159 

travel quickly to any part of the United States. Before the 
Revolution, people heard little news except that of their own 
neighborhoods, and few men ever traveled outside the colony 
in which they were born. Under such conditions it was very 
difficult to get the people of all the colonies to act together. 
Yet some of the wisest Revolutionary leaders had long seen 
that the colonists must unite if they were to succeed in -main- 
taining their rights against the aggressions of the British govern- 
ment. "We must all hang together or we shall all hang sep- 
aratel}^," said Benjamin Franklin as he signed the Declaration 
of Independence. 

The Albany Congress of 1754, the Stamp Act Congress of 
1765, and the First Continental Congress of 1774 were all held 
because the dangers which threatened the colonists were slowly Early 
forcing them to realize the necessity of union. Yet the Plan attempts at 
of Union proposed at Albany in 1754 was rejected by the col- 
onies, and the congresses of 1765 and 1774 did little, except to 
draw up petitions and pass resolutions. Although they were 
very important in bringing the leaders of the people together 
and in preparing the way for united action, these congresses 
were not real governments in any sense. 

It was very different with the second Continental Congress, 
which met in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775. This Congress 
became at once the government of the United Colonies. As we The second 
have already seen, it appointed Washington to command the Continental 
army and named other generals to serve under him. It bor- 
rowed money, adopted the Declaration of Independence, sent 
agents to foreign countries, and did many other things which 
only a government can do. In a word, that Continental Con- 
gress was our first national government. It continued to 
manage our national affairs from 1775 to 1781. 

As we had no written constitution during these years, the 
Continental Congress governed by common consent. It had 
all the power the people were willing to recognize and obey. Our govem- 
During the first year or two of the Revolution the people I?^°p under 
looked up to the Continental Congress, and its authority was nental Con- 
very great. The most influential men in the various states were gress 
sent to it. But after the new state governments were formed, 
the people more and more gave them the respect and obedience 
which at first they had shown the Continental Congress. 



160 BEGINNINGS OF OUR GOVERNMENT 

Some of the leading men now left the Congress to accept office 
in their own states. The states were well known and near at 
hand. The Congress was new and distant. The people began to 
distrust it, and the state governments grew jealous of its author- 
ity. Under these conditions its power steadily dwindled away. 
The Articles of Confederation. — The members of the Con- 
tinental Congress early saw the need of a written constitution 
Origin which should tell them just how much power they really 

possessed. The same day that they appointed a committee to 
draw up the Declaration of Independence, they named another 
to draft a form of govermiient. John Dickinson of Pennsyl- 
vania was the chairman of this committee, and the plan of 
govermnent which it reported was, in the main, his work. A 
few days after the Declaration of Independence was adopted 
Dickinson laid the Articles of Confederation before the Congress. 
When they were adopted by that body and approved by all 
the states, these articles were to become the first written consti- 
tution of the United States. 

It was no easy task to get the proposed plan of government 
adopted. The smaller states feared the growing power of 
The struggle the larger. New England and the southern section were 
over their jealous of each other. After discussing the Articles of Con- 
federation, at intervals, for more than a year, the Continental 
Congress at last adopted them in November, 1777. It took 
more than three years longer to get all the states to ratify 
them. The chief reason for this delay grew out of a dispute 
about the ownership of the land between the Alleghany Moun- 
tains and the Mississippi River. Some of the states clamied this 
this land by the terms of their colonial charters, and because 
of their efforts to settle it. But the states which had no 
such claims said that the western land was being won from 
the British and the Indians by the blood and the treasure of 
the people of all the states, and that it ought to be used for 
the benefit of all the people. Maryland refused to ratify the 
Articles of Confederation until it was understood that the 
states claiming western land would give it up to the United 
States. At last this assurance was given, and in March, 1781, 
the Articles of Confederation became the law of the land. The 
United States was governed under these articles from 1781 to 
1789. 



CRITICAL YEARS OF THE CONFEDERATION 161 

The government established by the Articles of Confedera- 
tion had very httle real power. The governing body was a 
Congress made up of delegates from the several states. Each Nature of the 
state had one vote. No important law could be passed without government 
the consent of nine states, and the Articles of Confederation 
could not be changed in any way unless the amendment was 
agreed to by all the states. These provisions made it very 
difficult to get anything done. The Congress was given the 
power to make treaties with other countries, to declare war and 
to make peace, to establish post-offices, and to manage Indian 
affairs. But it could not tax the people, raise armies, or regu- 
late commerce. If it wanted money or soldiers it asked the 
states for them. If the states did not furnish them the Congress 
could do nothing about it. It had no power to enforce its laws. 
The people soon learned, by bitter experience, their need of a 
stronger national government. 

The Critical Years of the Confederation, 1781-1789.— The 
Articles of Confederation went into effect the same year that 
Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. For several years after A critical 

1781 it was doubtful whether the young nation, which had just ^i"^® 
won its freedom from Great Britain, would live or die. These 
years have been called the critical period in American history. 
We will first examine the perils which threatened our national 

life under the Articles of Confederation and then see how these 
dangers were averted. 

The first peril of the Confederation was poverty. The 
government needed money to pay the men who had furnished 
the army with supplies during the war, to pay the interest on Financial 
the public debt and, most of all, to .pay the-long unpaid wages troubles 
of the soldiers who were threatening to mutiny if something 
were not quickly done for them. The only ways in which a 
government can get money are by taxing the people and by 
borrowing. But our national government under the Articles of 
Confederation had no power to tax the people. It could only 
ask the states for the money it needed and then wait until the 
states levied and collected the taxes and paid the money to 
the United States. This the states usually failed to do. In 

1782 and 1783, the Confederation received less than one dollar 
out of every six for which it asked. Nor was it any easier to 
borrow money. France and Holland had loaned money to the 

11 



162 



BEGINNINGS OF OUR GOVERNMENT 




United States during the war, but they could not be expected 
to continue to supply us with money after the war was over. 
"Our public credit is gone. We can have no right to hope, 
much less to expect the aid of others while we show so much 
unwillingness to help ourselves," wrote Robert Morris to 
Washington. 

Another danger to the welfare of the people grew out of 

the great lack of good money with which to carry on the busi- 

Bad money ness of the country. At the close of the Revolution the United 

States had no coinage of its 



own. There were various 
kinds of foreign money in 
common use — English and 
French coins and Spanish 
silver money that had come 
into the country through 
trade with the West Indies. 
But most of the money in 
the United States, when the 
Revolution ended, consisted 

Continental Paper Money ^f ^^^^^^, ^^^^^ .g^^^^ ^^ 

various times by the Continental Congress. If you will look 
at a piece of the paper money now in use you will see that it 
is not real money at all, but a promise to pay real money or 
coin. The value of a promise on a piece of paper money, like 
the value of any other promise, depends upon the ability and 
the willingness of its maker to fulfil it. As doubt of the ability 
of the United States to make good the large amount of 
Continental paper money issued during the Revolution grew in 
the minds of the people, that money steadily lost value. At 
one time it took $2000 in this depreciated currency to buy 
a suit of clothes. At last, the paper money of the Revolution 
came to have almost no value at all. Even to this day, when 
we wish to say that som(;thing is utterly worthless we declare 
that it is "not worth a Continental." 

While the people managed to earn a hving upon their farms 

or in their shops during the trying years of this critical period, 

Hard times it was very difficult for them to get enough money to pay their 

cause dis- (lebts and their taxes. At this time several of the states made 

matters worse by issuing more paper money which depreciated 



CRITICAL YEARS OF THE CONFEDERATION 163 



in value even more rapidly than the Continental currency. 
When men could not pay their debts, their property was seized 
and sold by the sheriff for the benefit of their creditors. Some- 
tunes debtors who had no property were thrown into prison. 
It was natural that under such conditions there should be great 
uneasiness in the country and much grumbling against the 
government. Frequently this popular discontent broke out 
in lawlessness and rioting. In Massachusetts in 1786, Daniel 
Shays led a dangerous rebellion which seriously threatened the 
peace in that state. 

Other causes than bad money and hard times seriously 
interfered with trade during those critical years. The Congress 
of the Confederation had no power to regulate commerce Selfishness 
between the several states or with foreign countries. Each of the states 
state could control its own trade just as it pleased. The states 

were jealous of one another, 
and some of them set up 
custom houses on their bor- 
ders at which they taxed 
the goods that came to their 
markets from the neighboring 
states. New York, for ex- 
ample, would not permit a 
cord of firewood from Con- 
necticut or a boatload of provisions from the New Jersey farms 
across the Hudson to be brought into New York City until 
it had paid a duty. All these vexatious restrictions on trade 
increased the people's dissatisfaction with a national govern- 
ment that could do nothing to prevent such selfish practices 
by the states. 

In foreign trade matters were no better. The Congress 
could make treaties of commerce with foreign nations but was 
without authority to enforce them. The commercial countries Foreign 
of the world were not eager to make treaties with a nation commerce 
that was powerless to keep its word. Although the war with prosper 
England was over, our relations with that country were far 
from friendly. We complained that England would not give 
up Detroit and the other rich fur-trading posts in the north- 
west, as she had promised in the Treaty of Paris. England 
replied that her merchants could not collect the debts which 




A Continental Coin 
Notice the motto : Mind Your Businessf 



164 



BEGINNINGS OF OUR GOVERNMENT 



Americans owed them before the Revolution, as the United 
States promised in the same treaty that they might. The 
British government restricted our trade with England, and 
with her colonies in the West Indies, and the Congress of the 
Confederation was powerless to do anything about it. Because 
our government was too weak to protect our trade abroad, few 
new ships were built, and our foreign commerce declined for 
some years after the Revolution. 

The men of the Revolution made the weak national 
government of the Confederation because they wanted most of 
Wise men the work of managing public affairs to be done by the states, 
saw the need ]y[Qg^ of them loved their own states far more than they cared 
government ^o^' ^lie whole country. But the selfish conduct of the states, 
and the hard times and disorder throughout the country during 
the trying years just after the Revolution, quickly brought 
the more thoughtful leaders of the people to see that the nation 
could never prosper until it had a government strong enough 
to enforce obedience at home and respect abroad. Washington 
called the Congress of the Confederation "a half -starving, 
limping government, tottering at every step," and declared' 
that the nation could not exist long without a government with 
greater power. Other influential men pointed out the need of 
a new government. James Madison of Virginia and Alexander 
Hamilton of New York, two young men who were to play a 
great part in the later history of the republic, were especially 
active in urging, with voice and pen, the making of a firmer 
Union. But the mass of the people were slow to act in the 
matter. In the meantime, several efforts to strengthen the 
Articles of Confederation, by amending them, failed because of 
the impossibility of getting the consent of all the states. 

The Constitutional Convention, 1787. — In 1785, delegates 
fiom Maryland and Virginia met at Washington's home at 
Mount Vernon to settle a dispute between those states about 
navigation on the Potomac River. Aided by Washington's 
advice, an agreement was speedily reached. It was then sug- 
gested that, if two states could thus easily settle their differences 
about trade, it might be well for men from all the states to 
meet for the purpose of talking over the commercial troubles 
of the country. Presently Virginia asked the other states to 
send delegates to such a meeting at Annapolis. As only five 



Convention 
of 1787 



THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 



165 



states sent representatives to the Annapolis Convention of 
1786, but little could be done by that body. Still, the men who 
came to Aimapolis saw clearly the need of a national govern- 
ment with authority to regulate commerce, and they called 
for another convention to revise the Articles of Confederation. 
After some hesitation the Congress united with them in asking 
all the states to send delegates to such a meeting. 




Constitution 



© Harris & Ewiti.g 



Mount Vernon 
The home of George Washington on the Potomac. 

The convention which drew up the Constitution of the 
United States met in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, in May, 
1787. All the states except Rhode Island were represented. The men who 
Most of the leaders of the Revolution were present. Washing- ™^^®^.^^f., 
ton, the most trusted man in the land, was chosen president of 
the convention. Franklin, full of years and wisdom, and the 
two brilliant young leaders, Madison and Hamilton, were the 
three greatest men on the floor. Next to these four stood 
such men as John Dickinson, Robert Morris, the financier 
of the Revolution, Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of 
Connecticut, the Pinckneys and John Rutledge of South Caro- 
lina, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, and William Paterson of 
New Jersey. Four prominent leaders of the Revolution were 



166 BEGINNINGS OF OUR GOVERNMENT 

absent. Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry did not come 
because they did not desire a stronger national government. 
John Adams was our minister to England and Thomas Jefferson 
represented his country at the court of France. 

The men of the Constitutional Contention faced a task of 
exceeding difficulty. At first they did not agree about what 
Difficulties ought to be done. Some of them wanted to patch up the 
Articles of Confederation and go home. Others felt that there 
was not enough sound cloth in the articles to hold the patches, 
and that now or never was the time to draw up a new consti- 
tution giving ample power to the national government. When 
some of the members argued that the people would not adopt 
the kind of constitution that ought to be made, Washington 
saved the day by a noble speech in which he said, "If, to 
please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how 
can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard 
to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the 
hand of God." 

After the convention decided to make a new constitution, 
its first difficult problem was the question of representation. 
Plans and Should the states be represented in proportion to their popula- 
compromises tion or should each state have the same number of votes in the 
lawmaking body? Virginia proposed a plan, drawn up by 
Madison, which provided for a Congress in which the states 
should be represented in proportion to the number of their 
inhabitants. This plan was favored by the large states. But 
the small states wanted all the states, large and small alike, to 
have equal weight in Congress, and New Jersey proposed a 
plan to carry their wishes into effect. The "large state" plan 
and the "small state" plan were debated with great warmth, 
and more than once the convention was on the point of break- 
ing up because its members could not agree upon either one of 
them. At last, however, the matter was settled by a com- 
promise which provided that the lawmaking power should 
be given to a Congress composed of two houses, a Senate in 
which each state should have an equal number of votes, and a 
House of Representatives in which the states should be repre- 
sented in proportion to their population. 

Slavery was responsible for two other serious questions 
which troubled the convention. As we have just said, repre- 



THE STATES RATIFY THE CONSTITUTION 167 

sentatives were to be apportioned among the states in propor- Slavery 

tion to their population. But should the slaves be counted ^^^^^^ 

. , dincrcnccs 

as a part of the population? The southern states with many of opinion 

slaves said yes to this question. The North, where slaves 
were few, did not want them counted when apportioning 
representatives among the states. But when it was suggested 
that direct taxes should be paid by the states in proportion to 
their population the two sections changed sides upon the 
question. For this purpose the North wanted to count all the 
slaves as a part of the population, the South did not. ' Finally 
it was decided that three-fifths of the slaves should be counted 
for both purposes. The northern men were eager to give 
Congress full power to regulate commerce. Some of the south- 
ern members feared that if Congress had this power it would 
stop the bringing of slaves from Africa which they desired to 
continue. By a third compromise it was agreed that Congress 
should control commerce but that it could not prohibit the 
African slave trade before 1808. 

These three great compromises settled the more serious 
differences of opinion in the convention. After they were made 
its members had little difficulty in agreeing upon the other Completing 
features of the new constitution. Finally Gouverneur Morris, ^° 
a young delegate from Pennsylvania, wrote the completed 
document in clear and simple language. The Constitution 
owes its literary excellence to his skilful pen. 

William E. Gladstone, a great English statesman, called 
the Constitution of the United States "the most wonderful 
work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose Sources of 
of man." But we must not think that the wise men who *^^. Consti- 
made the Constitution, during the summer of 1787, invented it. 
Their knowledge of the goverrmient of England and of her 
colonies in America, their experience in making constitutions 
for their states during the Revolution, and the sufferings of 
the country under the weak Articles of Confederation, all 
taught them how to make a constitution under which our 
people have lived in prosperity for more than a century. 

The States Ratify the Constitution. — The Constitutional 
Convention finished its work in September, 1787, and the new 
constitution was sent to the several states for their approval, tution before 
In each of the states the people elected a convention to consider the states 



168 BEGINNINGS OF OUR GOVERNMENT 

and pass upon the new form of government. It had been agreed 
that when nine of the states ratified the Constitution it was to 
go into effect over the states ratifying it. The struggle to set 
up a stronger government in the United States was thus trans- 
ferred from Independence Hall in Philadelphia to every com- 
munity in the land. 

From the first the Constitution met with violent opposi- 
tion. Some good men thought it was not democratic enough. 

Objections Others said that it deprived the states of their rights and gave 

*° ** too much power to the national government. Jealousy between 

the various sections of the country also stood in the way. The 
East feared the growing West, and the agricultural South and 
commercial North were suspicious of each other. The ignorant 
feared a government which they did not understand. The 
timid and faint-hearted said, as such people always do, "Let 
well enough alone." One serious objection was the absence in 
the proposed constitution of a clear statement of the rights of 
the people. This last objection was overcome by an under- 
standing that a Bill of Rights should be added to the Constitu- 
tion. Later this was done in the first ten amendments to that 
docmnent. 

The friends of the Constitution defended it against these 
objections with ability and zeal. Public meetings were held 

Its defenders to arouse popular interest in its ratification. The newspapers 
were filled with letters urging its adoption and showing how it 
would cure the evils from which the country was suffering under 
the Ai'ticles of Confederation. Alexander Hamilton, James 
Madison, and John Jay were most active in explaining and 
defending the form of government which it was proposed to 
set up. A series of papers called "The Federalist" which they 
wrote for this purpose is still the best explanation of the Con- 
stitution. In the end the argimients in favor of the Constitu- 
tion won for it the support of the business interests of the 
country and of the more thoughtful men among the people. 
Those who favored its ratification called themselves Federalists, 
and those who opposed such action were known as Anti- 
Federalists. 

Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey led the way 
by ratifying the Constitution in December, 1787, and during 

Ratification the first half of 1788, one by one, most of the other states followed 



CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 169 



their example. The closest contests were in Massachusetts, 
Virginia, and New York. In Massachusetts Samuel Adams, 
the great Revolutionary leader in the days before the war 
began, at fii'st opposed the Constitution but changed his mind 
when he was convinced that the people of Boston favored its 
ratification. His support saved the day for the new government 
in Massachusetts. Virginia 
ratified by a close vote in 
spite of the violent oppos- 
ition of Patrick Henry, the 
other great popular leader 
of the early Revolutionary 
period. In New York a 
convention opposed to the 
Constitution was won over 
to its support by the 
matchless skill in debate of 
Alexander Hamilton. Be- 
fore the end of July, 1788, 
all the states except North 
Carolina and Rhode Island 
had ratified theConstitution 
which thus became the law 
of the land. A year or two 
later, North Carolina and 
Rhode Island fell into line 
thus completing the Union 
of all the states. 

The Constitution of the 
United States. — The purpose of the Constitution is best 
stated in the words of its preamble; 

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a 
more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tran- 
quillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general 
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our 
posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the 
United States of America." 

In the Constitution the people have given the lawmaking 
power to a Congress which is composed of a Senate and a 
House of Representatives. There are two senators from each 




From the hiisi hij Ceracchi. 
Alexander Hamilton 



The 
preamble 



Congress 



170 



BEGINNINGS OF OUR GOVERNMENT 



state. Until 1913 the senators were chosen by the legislatures 
of the states. In that year an amendment to the Constitution 
was adopted, providing for their election by the direct vote of 
the people. The term of office of senators is six years. The 
members of the House of Representatives are elected by the 
people for a term of two years. The number of representatives 
from each state depends upon the number of its inhabitants. 
The Congress meets every year on the first Monday in Decem- 
ber. The Vice-President of the United States presides over the 




The National Capitol, Washington, D. C. 
The meeting place of the U. S. Senate and House of Representatives. 



Senate. The House of Representatives elects one of its own 

members to be its presiding officer. He is called the Speaker. 

A proposed law is called a bill. Bills may be introduced 

into either house of Congress except that all bills for raising 

How laws money must begin in the House of Representatives. After a 

are made ])i\\ has passed each house by a majority vote of those present, 

it is sent to the President for his approval. If the President 

signs the bill it becomes a law. If the President does not 

approve a bill which comes before him, he returns it with his 

objections to the house in which it originated. This act of the 

President is called a veto. Congress may then reconsider the 

bill, and if it passes a second time in each house by the votes of 



CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 171 

two-thirds of those present it becomes a law in spite of the 
President's veto. The Constitution also provides that if any 
bill is not returned by the President within ten week days 
after it is presented to him, it shall become a law unless Congress 
adjourns before the ten days have expired. You will notice 
that there are three different ways in which a bill before 
Congress may become a law. 

When they made their Constitution, the people of the 
United States gave many important powers to Congress. It 
can lay and collect taxes, borrow money, regulate commerce Powers of 
with foreign nations and between the states, coin money and Congress 
fix its value, and establish a postal system. Congress can 
declare war, raise and support armies, and provide and main- 
tain a navy. It also has power to create all the United States 
courts, except a Supreme Court which is provided for in the 
Constitution itself. These are some of the more important 
powers of Congress, l)ut it has many others. 

The Constitution further strengthens the national govern- 
ment by forbidding the states to coin money, to make paper 
money, to lay taxes on imports or exports, to keep troops or Powers 
ships of war in time of peace, to engage in war unless actually forbidden 
invaded, or to enter into any agreement with another state 
or with any foreign power. It will be remembered that many 
of the troubles of the critical years just before the Constitution 
was made grew out of the fact that, under the Articles of Con- 
federation, the states did some of the things which they are 
forbidden to do in the Constitution. 

The Constitution provides for a President of the United 
States and makes it his duty to enforce the laws. The President 
is elected by presidential electors for a term of four years. How the 
Each state has as many presidential electors as it has senators President 
and representatives in Congress. These electors are chosen 
in each state in such manner as its legislature may direct. For 
some time after the Constitution went into effect the pi-esiden- 
tial electors in many of the states were appointed by the 
legislatures themselves, but for many years they have all 
been elected by a direct vote of the people in the several states. 

The President is the commander-in-chief of the army and 
navy. He appoints all United States judges and many other ^^ ^j^^" '^^ 
officers of the national government, but these appointments President 



172 



BEGINNINGS OF OUR GOVERNMENT 



United 
States 
courts 



must be approved by the Senate. He may pardon offenders 
against the laws of the United States. The President makes 
all treaties with foreign nations, but no treaty that he makes 
goes into effect until it has been ratified by the Senate by a 
vote of two-thirds of the senators present. 




Impeach- 
ment 



I Harris & Ewing 
The Supreme Court of the United States 
(Left to right, standing). Justices Brandeis, Van Devanter, McReynolds, Clarke. 
(Seated). Justices Day, McKenna, Chief Justice White, Justices Hohnes, Pitney. 

The power to interpret or explain the Constitution and 
the laws made by Congress and to decide cases that arise under 
them, is given to the United States courts. The Constitution 
provides for a Supreme Court, and Congress has established 
various lower courts. The judges in all these courts hold their 
offices for life or during good behavior. If Congress passes a 
law that it is not given the right to pass in the Constitution, 
the Supreme Court may declare such a law unconstitutional. 
After that no one can be required to obey the unconstitutional 
act. 

The President, the judges, and various other United States 
officers may be removed from oflH.ce at any time if they disobey 



REFERENCES 173 

the laws or are guilty of other misconduct. Such removals are 
brought about in the following way. When a majority of the 
House of Representatives believe that an officer of the United 
States is guilty of wrongdoing, they may bring charges against 
him before the Senate. This is called impeachment. The 
impeached officer is then tried by the Senate, and if two-thirds 
of the senators find hmi guilty he must give up his office. 

The people of the United States may change their Consti- 
tution whenever enough of them desire to do so. An amendment 
to the Constitution may be proposed by Congress by a vote Amending 
of two-thirds of each house. There is another way of proposing t^®. Consti- 
ameiidments but it has never been used. A proposed amend- 
ment is sent to the states for their approval, and when ratified 
by three-fourths of the states it becomes a part of the Constitu- 
tion. Eighteen amendments have been added to the Consti- 
tution since it first went into effect in 1789. 

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. The 
states cannot make laws contrary to it, or contrary to the laws 
made by Congress under it. If they try to do so the judges will The supreme 
declare that their acts are void and no one will obey them. J^^o^t^e 
Every citizen must obey the Constitution and laws of the 
United States as well as those of his own state. If he does 
not, the national government will enforce its laws upon him. 
This is the great difference between the Articles of Confedera- 
tion and the Constitution. Under the Articles of Confederation 
the United States made laws and asked the states to enforce 
them. If the states refused or neglected this request, as they 
often did, the national government was powerless. Under the 
Constitution the national government possesses ample power to 
enforce its own laws upon every person in the land. 

REFERENCES. 

McLaughlin, The Confederation and the Constitution; Fiske, The 
Ciiiical Period of American History; Channing, History of the United 
States, Vol. Ill; McMaster, History of the People of the United States, 
Vol. I; Bryce, The American Commonwealth; Ashley, The Federal State. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. From Colonies to States. Fiske, The Critical Period of American 
History, 64-70. 



174 BEGINNINGS OF OUR GOVERNENT 

2. Making the Articles of Confederation. Channing, History of the 
United Slates, Vol. Ill, 448-456. 

3. The Defects of the Articles of Confederation. Hart, American 
History Told by Contemporaries, Vol. Ill, 131-137. 

4. How the States Treated the Confederation. Hart, American 
History Told by Contemporaries, Vol. Ill, 126-130. 

5. Quarrels between the States. Fiske, The Critical Period of Ameri- 
can History, 144-153. 

6. Shays's Rebellion. McLaughlin, The Confederation and the Con- 
stitution, 154-167. 

7. Washmgton's Views on the Situation in 1786. Hart, American 
History Told by Contemporaries, Vol. Ill, 188-191. 

8. The Annapolis Convention. Hart, American History Told by 
Contemporaries, Vol. Ill, 185-187. 

9. The Men Who Made the Constitution. Fiske, Tne Critical Period 
of American History, 224-249; Hart, American History Void by Contem- 
poraries, Vol. Ill, 205-211. 

10. Virginia Ratifies the Constitution. McLaughhn, The Confeder- 
ation and the Constitution, 298-305. 

11. Massachusetts Ratifies the Constitution. Fiske, TJie Critical 
Period of American History, 318-331. 

12. Hamilton's Defense of the Constitution. Hart, American History 
Told by Cordemporaries, Vol. Ill, 242-246. 

13. Rejoicing Over the Ratification of the Constitution. McMaster, 
History of the People of the United States, Vol. I, 492-496. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Francis Hopkmson, The Neic Roof. 

Novels: Atherton, The Conqueror; Bellamy, The Duke of Stock- 
bridge; Barr, Trinity Bells. 

Biographies: Lodge, George Washington; Morse, Benjamin Franklin; 
Gay, James Madison; Lodge, Alexander Hamilton 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. What other nations than the United States have federal govern- 
ments? 

2. How would you make a constitution for a literary society in your 
school? Wliy should a society have a constitution? 

3. When was the present constitution of your state made? How was 
it made? What is democratic government? Why are our state govern- 
ments more democratic than they were just after the Revolution? How 
could they be made more democratic than they are now? Ought this to 
be done? Ought judges to be elected or appointed? Why? 



QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 175 

4. Why is it easier for all our people to act together now than it was in 
the Revolution? 

5. What were the defects of the Articles of Confederation? Why 
were these defects not corrected by amending the articles? 

6. Write a clear account of the work of the Constitutional Convention. 

7. Why did so many people oppose the ratification of the Constitution? 
Why did North Carolina and Rhode Island refuse to ratify the Constitution? 

8. Memorize the preamble of the Constitution. 

9. How are laws made under the Constitution? How are they 
enforced? 

10. How may the Constitution be amended? How many times has 
it been amended? Give the provisions of any amendment now being 
considered. 



CHAPTER IX 



Winning a Foothold in the West 



English 
dominion 
extended 
to the 
Mississippi 



England Gains Control of the West. — We have seen how 
Marquette and La Salle explored the Mississippi River and 
claimed its valley for France. But beyond a few mission stations 
and trading posts the French never made good their claim to 




Pontiac's Defiance 
This great chief- 
tain, who led the 
Indians against the 
English in 1763, 
scornfully offering 
terms of surrender 
to one of the garri- 
sons on the western 
border. 




this vast region by actual settlement. When the first settlers 
from the English colonies on the Atlantic seaboard began to 
penetrate the wilderness of the Alleghany Mountains and tres- 
pass upon land claimed by the French, the French and Indian 
War was fought to determine the destiny of America. When 
it ended, the French empire in America was a thing of the past, 

176 



FIRST PIONEERS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS 177 

and England owned all the country east of the Mississippi 
River. 

England soon found that it was one thing to win a title 
to the West and quite another to take possession of the country. 
The English troops had scarcely occupied Detroit and the Pontiac's 
other French posts in the northwest before they had to fight ^^ 
for their lives. Pontiac, one of the most crafty Indian warriors 
in American history, led the tribes of that region against the 
English garrisons, destroyed several of them, and was defeated 
only after a desperate Indian war. The story of the war has 
been told in a fascinating way by Francis Parkman, one of 
our greatest American historians, in his "Conspiracy of 
Pontiac." 

The West which passed into the hands of England in 
1763 was still a wilderness inhabited by wild beasts and Indians. 
There were a few little French villages like Detroit, Green England fails 
Bay in Wisconsin, and Vincennes on the Wabash River, and to keep 
some scattered French trappers and hunters in the forests, of the West 
Practically, however, the whole region from the Alleghany 
Mountains to the Mississippi River was an Indian country, 
and England desired to keep it so for the present. In 1763 
the British goverimient forbade the governors of the colonies 
to give settlers titles for "any lands beyond the heads or 
sources of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean 
from the west or northwest." But it was impossible for a 
government three thousand miles away to keep the land- 
hungry settlers away from the lands they coveted. 

The First Pioneers beyond the Mountains. — As soon as 
the French and Indian War was over hardy frontiersmen began 
to cross the mountains, eager to occupy the newly won western The 
lands. Some of them settled in the country near the forks of westward 
the Ohio, where Pittsburgh was founded in 1765. Others made ^^o^ement 
their way up the Appalachian valleys into the mountain 
regions of Virginia and North Carolina. A few years later the 
boldest of these border settlers passed through the last gaps 
in the mountains, to become the pioneers of Kentucky and 
Tennessee. 

Daniel Boone was the most famous pioneer of Kentucky. 
His life was so like that of the other settlers upon the The story of 
western border that the story of it will help us to understand Boone 
12 



178 WINNING A FOOTHOLD IN THE WEST 



The 

frontiers- 
man 






them. Daniel Boone was born in Pennsylvania in 1734. His 
early life was spent upon what was then the frontier of that 
colony, and while still a boy he was a mighty hunter. He had 
little of the education that is gained from books but he knew 
and loved the wild woods and was skilled in all kinds of wood- 
craft. 

When Daniel was about eighteen years old the Boones> 
like many other frontier famihes, moved to the southwest, 

following the long valleys 
in the mountains, and at 
last settled m a new home 
on the Yadkin River in 
western North Carolina. 
Here Daniel Boone married, 
established a home of his 
own, and until he was 
thirty-five years of age lived 
like the other hardy, rugged, 
frontier farmers about him. 
He often went on long 
hunting trips into the wil- 
derness west of the settle- 
ments, and had a taste of 
Indian fighting during the 
French and Indian War. At 
last the tales told by a wan- 
dering fur trader about a. 
beautiful country called 
Kentucky, a land of count- 
less deer, buffaloes, and wild 
turkeys, led Boone and five other hunters to go in quest of it. 
In 1769 Daniel Boone, with his five companions, crossed 
the mountains and found his way through the Cumberland 
Boone in Gap into the valley of the Kentucky River. He spent the next 
Kentucky two years in Kentucky, hunting, trapping, and exploring the 
country. During this first long visit to Kentucky Boone had 
many strange and exciting adventures. Once he lived all alone 
in the wilderness for three months "without bread, salt, or. 
sugar, without company of fellow creatures, or even a horse 
or dog." Boone was so pleased with the beautiful Kentucky 




Daniel Boone 



FIRST PIONEERS BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS 179 



country that he resolved to bring his family to it and make it 
his futm-e home. 

In 1773 Daniel Boone and several of his neighbors started 
with their families for Kentucky, but an Indian war party which 
killed Boon(^'s oldest son stopped them for a time. It was not Settlement 
until April, 1775, less than two weeks before the fight at Lex- "^ Kentucky 
ington and Concord, that Boone and his followers reached their 
destination and began the settlement of Boonesborough on 




The West at the Time of the Revolution 

the bank of the Kentucky Riven-. Harrodsburg and two or 
three other early Kentucky settlements were established about 
the same time. The leading pioneers of Kentucky were nearly 
all men of sturdy Scotch-Irish stock. As their numbers grew 
they cleared and cultivated the land, brought domestic animals 
from the older settlements, planted fruit trees, and slowly 
changed Boone's hunting ground into a land of homes and 
farms. 

The pioneers of Tennessee were very much like those of 
Kentucky. The first white settler entered eastern Tennessee founders of 
in 1769. During the next three or four years more frontiers- Tennessee 



The 



180 WINNING A FOOTHOLD IN THE WEST 



men came, and many cabins were built in the valleys of the 
Watauga and Holston rivers. James Robertson and John 
Sevier were the leaders in the Watauga Settlement, as it is 
called. Robertson was a quiet man of little education but of 
great natural ability and energy. Sevier was a handsome young 
Virginian of good education, eager, ambitious, and very popular. 
Both of them were mighty hunters, fearless explorers, and 
famous Indian fighters. In 1779 James Robertson moved two 
hundred miles farther west and founded the present city of 
Nashville upon the Cumberland River. He is often called the 
Father of Tennessee. 

Border Warfare in the Revolution. — The first frontiersmen 
beyond the Alleghany Mountains lived with their rifles ever 
Savage foes at hand for they were in constant peril of Indian attack. For 
ten years after the close of Pontiac's war in 1764 there was 
nominal peace between the red men and the white, yet even 
then outbreaks between the two races were not uncommon. 
Two great groups of Indian tribes threatened the western 
border: those north of the Ohio River, among whom the 
Shawnees were conspicuous, and the southern Indians, of whom 
the Cherokees were the special foes of the pioneers in eastern 
Tennessee. Kentucky was the hunting ground of both the 
northern and the southern Indians, and many a grim fight 
between them had taken place in its forests. In the language 
of the Indians Kentucky means the ''dark and bloody ground." 

The northern Indians looked on in alarm as the pioneers 
of western Pennsylvania and Virginia began to cut down the 
forests and destroy the game of their hunting grounds. In 
1774 their war parties began to harry the settlements in this 
region with fire and slaughter. Some of the settlers were 
killed, while others fled east of the mountains or gathered in 
the log forts which they had l^uilt for defense. Governor 
Dunmore of Virginia promptly made war upon the Indians, 
who were defeated in a fierce fight upon the Great Kanawha 
River and forced to make peace. It was just after Dunmore's 
war ended that the first S(^ttlements in Kentucky were planted. 

Soon after the outbreak of the Revolutionary War the 
British began to incite the Indians to attack the American 
frontiersmen. The tribes in the South were the first to strike. 
Early in 1776 war bands of Cherokees fell upon the outlying 



Dunmore's 
war 



The 

southern 

border 



BORDER WARFARE IN THE REVOLUTION 181 



frontier settlements in eastern Tennessee, South Carolina, and 
Georgia. The cabins were burnt, the live stock driven off, and 
the men, women, and children massacred. The southern 
frontiersmen flew to arms, and before the close of 1776 they 
inflicted such punishment upon the Cherokees that it was 
several years before their tribe ventured upon the warpath 
again. During these years the border settlers were steadily 




The Settlement at Boonesborough 



From an old print. 



growing stronger and better able to hold their own against the 
red men. 

At first the Indians on the northern border, who had not 
forgotten their defeat in 1774, were not eager to renew the 
fighting. But they were soon stirred up by the British agents, The 
and during 1777 and 1778 the entire western frontier of New j^ortl^ern 
York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the infant settlements in 
Kentucky suffered terribly from the tomahawk and the scalp- 
ing-knife. Thriving settlements in the Wyoming Valley in 
northern Pennsylvania and in the Cherry Valley in central 
New York were ruined by raiding parties of Indians and Tories. 
We have already seen how General SuUivan punished the 
Iroquois Indians for their part in these massacres. ■ 

In Kentucky the backwoodsmen gathered for protection. 



182 WINNING A FOOTHOLD IN THE WEST 



Frontier 
stations 



George 



Indians 
north of the 
Ohio 



in the fortified stations like Boonesborough and Harrodsburg. 
Both of these places were repeatedly besieged by the Indians 
but always managed to beat off their assailants. It is prob- 
able, however, that in the end all the Kentucky settlements 
would have been destroyed had it not been for the heroic exploit 
of George Rogers Clark. 

How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest. — George 
Rogers Clark was a young Mrginian who became one of the 
early pioneers in Kentucky. Like Boone, Clark loved the 
Rogers Clark y^[\({ life of the border. Like Sevier, he was a born leader of 
men, tall and strong, with "a penetrating, sparkling eye," 
daring, ambitious, and far-seeing. In the importance of his 
service to the new nation Clark was destined to surpass all 
the other border heroes of his time. 

The vast region north of the Ohio River was the home of 
warlike Indian tribes. Here and there were a few old French 
towns like Kaskaskia on the Mississippi and Vincennes on the 
Wabash River, and a few British military posts hke Detroit. 
These villages and military stations were the centers, of British 
influence in the Northwest. There the Indians were furnished 
with supplies and incited to take the warpath against the 
American frontier settlers. Because George Rogers Clark 
knew thes(^ facts he resolved to carry the war into the enemy's 
country, capture the French tow^ns, and win the Northwest 
from the British. 

Clark returned from Kentucky to Virginia in the fall of 
1777 and laid his plan before Governor Patrick Henry who 
approved it and advanced some money to carry it out. In the 
spring of 1778 Clark left the settlements on the Monongahela 
River at the head of one hundred and fifty Virginia frontiers- 
men. His men were clad in buckskin hunting shirts and carried 
long flint-lock rifles. In their clumsy flatboats they drifted 
silently down the Monongahela and the Ohio, past long reaches 
of Indian-haunted forest, until they reached the falls in the 
latter river, where the city of Louisville now stands. Here 
they built a fort and planted a crop of corn. Then Clark 
went on down the Ohio with a small forc(> of picked men until 
they passed the mouth of the Tennessee. Leaving the boats 
at this point he led his men straight across the country to 
Kaskaskia, which he surprised and captured without striking a 



Clark's 
expedition 



HOW CLARK WON THE NORTHWEST 



183 



blow. Soon the other French towns on the Mississippi were in 
his hands, and a httle later Vincennes acknowledged his author- 
ity. When the French inhabitants in this region found that 
Clark meant to treat them justly they gladly took an oath of 
loyalty to the United States. 

When Hamilton, the British commander of the Northwest, 
heard of Clark's conciuests north of the Ohio, he advanced from 
Detroit to Vincennes, where he spent the winter. It was the The capture 
British leader's intention to renew the campaign in the spring, °^ Vincennes 



y^^Vi, 




Clark's Virginians Crossing the Drowned Lands 

drive the Americans out of the Northwest Territory, and 
then lead a strong force of British and Indians against the settle- 
ments in Kentucky. But George Rogers Clark was not the 
man to await attack. He struck first, sure, and hard. Leaving 
Kaskaskia early in February, 1779, he led his men in a march 
of almost incredible difficulty across lands flooded by the 
spring freshets and forced the surrender of the British garrison 
at Vincennes. There was great rejoicing among the frontiers- 
men at the news that the "hair-buyer" general, as Hamilton 
was called, was a prisoner. 

The importance of Clark's daring and heroic exploit can 
hardly be overestimated. It not only saved the infant settle- 



184 WINNING A FOOTHOLD IN THE WEST 

The ments in Kentucky from destruction at the hands of the 

Northwest British and the Indians, but it won the vast Northwest Terri- 
tory for the United States. The British claimed all the coun- 
try north of the Ohio. By the Quebec Act of 1774 ihi^y had 
made this vast region, — the present states of Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, a part of the province of 
Quebec. If they had been in actual possession of all this 
territory it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to 
get them to give it up at the close of the Revolution. But 
when Franklin, Adams, and Jay were negotiating the treaty of 
peace with Great Britain they could claim the Northwest 
Territory on the ground that a large part of it was in the actual 
possession of their countrymen. It is probable that the conquest 
of this territory by George Rogers Clark made the Great Lakes 
instead of the Ohio River the northern boundary of the United 
States. 

Rival Claims and Land Cessions. — The Mississippi River 
was the western boundary of the United States at the close of 
The land the Revolution. But, as we have seen, there was a dispute 
claims of the between the states about the ownership of the land west of the 
Alleghany Mountains. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, 
the two Carolinas, and Georgia each clauned to own the land 
due west of it because its original charter had defined its terri- 
tory as extending from "sea to sea." Virginia also claimed the 
land north of the Ohio River because its charter of 1609 said 
that its territory extended from "sea to sea, west and north- 
west." Virginia further held that the Northwest Territory 
was hers by right of conquest since George Rogers Clark was a 
Virginia soldier and the expenses of his expedition had been 
paid out of the treasury of that state. New York claimed 
some of the western land, on the ground that the Iroquois 
Indians had ceded it to her by treaty, but such a claim had 
little value. The accompanying map will make these claims 
clear. It will be noticed that Massachusetts and Connecticut 
on the one hand and Virginia on the other were rival claimants 
to part of the land north of the Ohio River. 

New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
Western Delaware, and Maryland, the six states having no claims in 
to"the United ^^^ West, urged that the land in question ought to be given 
States to the United States to be used for the benefit of all the people. 



THE PUBLIC LAND SYSTEM 



185 



You will remember that Maryland refused to ratify the Articles 
of Confederation until assured that this would be done. At 
various times between 1784 and 1802 all the land, except 
Kentucky, west of the thirteen original states as they exist 
today, was ceded to the United States by the states claiming 
it. Kentucky remained a county of Virginia until it was 
admitted into the Union as a state-. 

When the land in the West was ceded to the United States 
it became the duty of the national government to devise a 
plan for giving titles for their farms to the pioneers who settled 
upon the new public domain, and to set up territorial govern- 
ments as the need for them arose. We will next inquire how 
these two things w^ere done. 

The Public Land System. — A deed is a paper in which a 
man is given the title to a piece of land by its former owner. 
At first all the land in the English colonies belonged to the Early land 
king by right of discovery. The first settlers upon the land in *^*^®^ 
the colonies received the deeds, which gave them titles to their 
farms, from the colonial governors who represented the king 
or in some cases the proprietors to whom the king had granted 
the land. At the time of the Revolution all the land in each 
colony which had not yet passed into private hands became 
the property of the state, and settlers upon it must get their 
titles from the state government. When the western land was 
given to the United States by the states claiming it, the pioneers 
who settled upon it must look to the national government for 
their land titles. 

A deed contains a description of the land which it conveys 
from one person to another. But before land can be accurately 
described it must be carefully surveyed. This was rarely done 
on the frontier where each settler was usually his own surveyor 
and marked the limits of the land which he claimed by blazing 
the trees with his axe. This practice made the farms very irregu- 
lar in size and shape and often left patches of land which 
nobody wanted. As two or more men frequently claimed the 
same land the history of the early frontier is filled with dis- 
putes and lawsuits over land titles. 

In order to avoid such troubles in the new national domain 
Congress passed an act in 1785 which provided a simple 
and accurate method of surveying the government land and 



Primitive 
surveying 



Surveying 
the public 
domain 



186 • WINNING A FOOTHOLD IN THE WEST 



How the 
settler 
secured his 
land 



disposing of it to settlers. Under this plan the surveyors of the 
government first established a north and south line, which was 
called the principal meridian, and crossed this with an east 
and west line, which was called the base line. Starting from 
the principal meridian and the base line the surveyors next 
divided the public land into square l)locks by drawing parallel 
lines due north and south and crossing these with parallel 
lines running east and west. As all these lines were drawn 
six miles apart they cut the country up into blocks each six 
miles square. Such a block of land was called a township. 
Each township was similarly marked off like a checkerlward 
into squares one mile on each side. A square mik^ of land thus 

marked was called 
a section, and con- 
tained six hundred 
and forty acres. The 
sections in each 
townshipwere num- 
bered as shown in 
the diagram on this 
page. Each section 
was divided into 
quarters, which 
could easily be sub- 
divided by the sur- 
veyors if necessary. 
This plan has been followed in surveying all the public 
land in the United States, and accounts for the fact that 
townships and counties in the western states are usually square 
or rectangular instead of having the irregular shapes so com- 
mon in the original thirteen states. 

After the public land was surveyed according to this plan 
a man who desired to settle upon it first located the particular 
piece of land which he wanted, noting the township and section 
in which he found it, and then went to a puljlic land office and 
paid the small price per acre which the government asked for 
its land. He was then given a deed by the United States which 
made him owner of the land. By this plan each farm could be 
accurately described in the deed and there was no danger that 
the same land would be sold to more than one settler. In 















r 


i 












1 














3 




Sketch of Township. 
3 South, Range II West 














o 


i 

5 — 
Si 


showing Sections. 

N 




VI 


V 


IV 


III 


II 


l' 




J 


^ 




6 


5 


4 


3 


^ 


I 








Principal Base Line 


1 


= 


^E 


7 


8 


9 


10 


11 


12 










i 


18 


17 


16 


16 


14 


13 














2 




19 


20 


21 


22 


23 24 






30 


29 


28 


27 


26 25 


i 












3 




M-- 


31 


32 


33 


34 


35 36 












< 


5 


■ ■ ■ ■ 1 


1 



Diagram Explaining Public Land System 



THE ORDINANCE OF 1787 187 

each township one section of land, usually the sixteenth, was 
set apart for the support of public schools. Most of our western 
states now have permanent school funds derived from the sale 
of land thus reserved for educational purposes. 

The Ordinance of 1787. — When people began to settle 
upon the western land, which had been given to the United 
States by the states, it became the duty of the nation to pro- A govern- 
vide a government for their protection. This was done for the ^^".t 5^^ 
first time by the famous Ordinance of 1787, which created Territory 
a government for the Northwest Territory, as the vast region 
north of the Ohio River was called. At first this territory was 
governed by a governor, a secretary, and three judges appointed 
by Congress. When there were five thousand free men in the 
territory they wore permitted to elect a house of representatives 
to help make their laws. The Ordinance of 1787 also provided 
for the division of the Northwest Territory into not less than 
three nor more than five states, and said that when each of 
these states had sixty thousand free inhabitants it must be 
admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original 
states. In the course of time the great states of Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin grew up in the territory 
organized under this law. 

The Ordinance of 1787 laid the foundations of government 
by the people in the Northwest Territory. It said that the 
settlers in that region should always be represented in the Freedom and 
body which made their laws and have freedom of worship and ®""<^^t*o" 
the right of trial by jury. It forbade slavery and declared that 
"religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good 
goverrmient and the happiness of mankind, schools and the 
means of education shall forever be encouraged." 

The Ordinance of 1787 was one of the greatest laws ever 
passed in America, not only because it gave free, democratic 
institutions to the Northwest Territory, but even more because Our 
it was a pattern for the numerous other territorial governments ^^"^tonal 
which were organized from time to time by the United States, 
as the frontier steadily moved westward across the continent 
to the Pacific. It meant that as the western territory was 
settled it should be organized into states, each of which should 
have all the rights that the older states in the East possessed. 
The passage of this law marks the beginning of a territorial 



i88 WINNING A FOOTHOLD IN THE WEST 



policy under which the Union has grown from the thirteen 
states of the Revolutionary period to the . forty-eight states 
of the present day. 

The Growth of Western Settlement. — Neither the hardship 

of pioneer life nor fear of the Indians kept the people from 

The western flocking toward the western frontier during the Revolution and 

frontier ^j^g critical years which followed its close. Times were hard 

in the new nation, 
and the more daring 
and ambitious men 
sought the border 
where good land 
could be had ahnost 
for the taking. The 
frontier of those 
days ran in a great 
curve from north- 
ern New England 
through central 
New York, western 
Pennsylvania and 
Virginia, into Ken- 
tucky and Tennes- 
see, and thence fell 
back into western 
South Carolina and 
middle Georgia. 
Much of this fron- 
tier was within the 
limits of the old 
states. Vermont was added to the Union as the four- 
teenth state in 1791, and Kentucky and Tennessee were the 
first states west of the Alleghany Mountains. 

We have seen how the earliest settlements in Kentucky 
were in constant peril of destruction by the British and the 
The growth Indians. After George Rogers Clark's conquest of the North- 
of Kentucky ^y^g^ removed this danger a stream of settlers poured across 
the mountains into that beautiful region. In spite of occa- 
sional raids by the Indians the log cabins of the pioneers were 
built farther and farther into the wilderness, and the forests 




The Frontier Just After the Revolution 



THE GROWTH OF WESTERN SETTLEMENT 189 




Early 
Tennessee 



around these frontier homes fell before the axes of the woods- 
men. From the beginning the settlers in Kentucky managed 
their own local affairs. Their land was a part of the country 
claimed by Virginia and was never ceded by that state to the 
United States. Kentucky remained a county of Virginia until 
1792 when it was admitted into the Union as a state. 

The growth of early Tennessee was very much like that 
of Kentucky. Occasional yyar parties of Cherokees were beaten 
off and sometimes se- 
verely punished by the 
frontiersmen under 
those matchless Indian 
fighters, Sevier and 
Robertson. The set- 
tlers of the Watauga 
Valley early set up a 
local government of 
their own and in 1784 
they organized a state 
which they called 
Franklin. But North 
Carolina, which claimed 
the Tennessee country, 
objected to this action 
and the plan for the 
new state had to be 
given up. In 1790 
North Carolina ceded 
Tennessee to the nation. 
It was then made a 
United States territory, and in 1796 it became the sixteenth 
state in the Union. 

The presence of several strong and warlike Indian 
tribes in the country north of the Ohio River which is now 
the state of Ohio, delayed the settlement of that region Settlement 
for some years. The first settlement in Ohio was made at "^ ^^° 
Marietta in 1788 by the Ohio Company, a land company 
which had bought from Congress a great tract of land on the 
Muskingum River. The settlements in Ohio grew slowly at 
first because of the continued hostility of the Indians. In 



General (" Mad ") Anthony Wayne 



190 WINNING A FOOTHOLD IN THE WEST 

1791 General St. Clair led an army against the tribes in the 
Ohio country. St. Clair was a brave man, but he proved to 
be a poor Indian fighter. The red men attacked him in the woods 
and killed or wounded more than two-thirds of his troops. 
After St. Clair's disastrous defeat General Anthony Wayne, 
one of the best soldiers of the Revolution, was sent to Ohio to 
Wayne's carry on the war against the Indians. Wayne was a bold and 
y/*^**^'T^P^®^ dashing fighter and at the same time a prudent and resourceful 
leader. After careful preparation he marched against the 
Indians in 1794, defeated them in the "Battle of the Fallen 
Timber," and the following year forced them to sign a treaty 
in which they gave up all their claims to southern and eastern 
Ohio. After the Indian power was thus broken, so many settlers 
flocked across the Ohio River that in 1803 Ohio was admitted 
into the Union as a state. 

Life on the Frontier. — Pioneer life on the western border 
of Pennsylvania and Virginia or in the more remote outposts 
The journey of settlement in Kentucky and Tennessee was everywhere 
to the West jjiuch alike. The journey of a settler's family to its new home 
in the wilderness was attended by hardship and danger. As a 
rule a group of families moved together for mutual protection. 
They could take little with them. A few cooking utensils and 
some rolls of bedding were carried on pack-horses. The men, 
rifle in hand, drove the pack-horses or marched in front or at 
the side of the trail to guard against Indian attack. If cattle 
were taken it was the duty of the lioys to drive them. Some- 
times the women and younger children rode on horseback, but 
oftener they walked. As soon as roads were opened through 
the woods, wagons were used to carry the women, small chil- 
dren, and household goods. Many of the settlers along the 
Ohio River in Kentucky and in the Northwest Territory made 
their way in this fashion to Pittsburgh or Wlieeling. At these 
places they bought or built flat boats large enough to carry 
all their possessions. Upon these rude boats they floated 
down the river until they reached the neighborhood of their 
future homes. 

When the frontiersman reached the land which he intended 

to make his own, he first built a shelter for his family. Some- 

on^^the °™^^ times this was only a rude hut built of poles and covered with 

border grass or bark, but if there were other settlers near at hand 



LIFE ON THE FRONTIER 



191 



to help raise the heavy logs, a substantial cabin was erected. 
Its roof was made of split boards or shingles held in place by 
laying stones upon them. Sometunes the cabin had no floor 
but the earth tramped hard; oftener the floor was made of 
puncheons. The chinks between the logs were filkxl with clay. 
At one end of the single room was a fireplace with its chimney 
of stone or sticks plastered with clay. The frontier cabin 
contained little furniture except a few homemade stools and 
benches and a rude table. Usually there was a loft above in 




Fort "Washington, Cincinnati, Ohio 

which the boys slept. Bear skins and deer hides were much 
used for bedding. 

When the Indians threatened war the frontiersmen aban- 
doned the cabins in their clearings and came together in a 
station or wooden fort which they had built for their protec- 
tion. These forts were square palisades of upright logs, with 
strong blockhouses at the corners and cabins on one or more 
sides of the sciuare. They were provided with great barred 
doors or gates, and there was usually room inside the enclosure 
for the horses and cattle of the settlers. The picture on this 
page will help you to understand what a frontier fort was like. 
If such a fort was defended by brave and resolute men it was 
almost impossible for the Indians to take it unless they could 



Frontier 
forts 



192 WINNING A FOOTHOLD IN THE WEST 



toil 



surprise the garrison or set fire to the buildings. The inmates of 
the fort were continually on their guard against these two dangers. 
The life on the frontier was one of constant peril. It was 
also a life filled with hard work. The men attacked the sur- 
Danger and rounding forest with their axes. At first there were only little 
clearings around the cabins, but year by year these clearings 
grew as the great trees were cut down and burned. Orchards 
were planted, and in time cultivated fields surrounded the 
homes of the pioneer farmers. The women were even busier 

than the men, for they pre- 
pared all the food and 
made all the clothing for 
their large families. The 
spinning wheel and loom 
were found in almost every 
home. But in spite of the 
danger and toil of their 
rough lives our pioneer 
ancestors were probably 
quite as happy as we are 
today. 

At first all the frontiers- 
men were farmers or hunters 
and trappers. As time 
»i|||i|jfe-^^i J^'mnniii[||f im passed and more settlers 

IIM—^^ Sml' J ikill'/iL^^ ^^^™^' ^ ^^^^ ^i^'^'^^ straggling 

villages appeared. T h e 
frontier village grew uj) 
around a store and a tavern, 
and possibly contained a log 
schoolhouse and a little 
church. Money was very scarce in the new settlements and 
barter was the common form of trade. It was very difficult 
to bring goods from the East across the mountains, but a few 
much-needed articles like salt and iron were brought in on 
pack-horses, which returned to the eastern cities laden with the 
rich peltries of the wilderness. 

Each pioneer family made at home nearly all the utensils, 
„ furniture, clothing, and tools that it possessed. Corn was 

Industries ground into meal in a rude hand mill, and coarse Unen was 



Growth 




A Hand Mill for Grinding Corn 



LIFE ON THE FRONTIER 193 

made from home-grown flax or from the bark of the wild nettle. 
Even the long rifle, the famous weapon which the frontiersmen 
used with such deadly skill, was made in the backwoods. 

But with all its hard work and danger the life of the early 
pioneers was not without its amusements. There were hunting 
expeditions, horse races, and log-rollings or corn-huskings in Amusements 
which neighbors met to help each other with their work and 
sometimes stayed to dance in the evening. The frontier wed- 
dings were always times of feasting and of much boisterous 
merriment. 

There was little opportunity for education in the back- 
woods and some of the greatest frontiersmen never attended 
school. Daniel Boone once wrote that he had "cilled a bar" The first 
and Robertson was taught to read and spell by his wife, who schools 
was an educated woman. In some of the settlements little 
log schoolhouses were built in which the children were taught 
to read, write, and cipher. At first there was even less oppor- 
tunity for the early settler to attend church than to go to 
school. But heroic ministers who followed the frontiei'smen 
into the wilderness kept religious worship alive and in the 
course of time established churches in the new land. 

The men who first penetrated the western wilderness and 
founded the first states beyond the Alleghany Mountains were 
largely of Scotch-Irish stock. IVIingled with these Scotch- The char- 
Irishmen, however, were many settlers of English or German ^*^!5,^ 
descent and a few with French Huguenot names. But whatever 
their origin, the pioneers who won the first states in the West 
from the wilderness and the savages were hardy, self-reHant 
men of great physical endurance, dauntless courage, and iron 
will. Only such men could survive the privations and dangers 
on the frontier. The constant perils in the midst of which 
they lived made the frontiersmen stern and harsh, and in 
their treatment of the Indians, often ruthless and vindictive. 
But in their relations with each other the first settlers of the 
West were helpful and neighl)orly, and in their ideas about 
government they were the most democratic people in America. 

We owe a great debt to the men and women who fii'st 
won a foothold in the West. In spite of diflficulties and perils 
that might well appall the stoutest heart, they opened the Our debt to 
way into the Mississippi valley and began the westward march *^® pioneers 
13 



1P4 WINNING A FOOTHOLD IN THE WEST 

of the pioneers across the continent. The frontiersmen of the 
Revolution stand-in the front rank among the makers of 
America. 

REFERENCES. 

Roosevelt, The Winning of the West; Thwaites, Daniel Boorie; How 
George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest; Howard, Preliminaries of the 
Revolution, Chap. XIII; Van Tyne, The American Revolution, Chap. 
XV; McLaughlin, The Confederation and the Constitution, Chaps. VII, 
VIII; Shaler, Kentucky; Phelan, Hidory of Tennessee. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. Pontiac's Treachery at Detroit. Parkman, The Conspiracy of 
Pontiac, I, 217-229. 

2. The Backwoodsmen of the Alleghanies. Roosevelt, The Winning 
of the West, I, 101-133. 

3. The Boyhood of Daniel Boone. Thwaites, Daniel Boone, 5-12. 

4. Boone's First Hunting Trip in Kentucky. Thwaites, Daniel 
Boone, 71-84. 

5. James Robertson and John Sevier. Roosevelt, The Win7ii7ig of 
the West, I, 176-183. 

6. The Battle of the Great Kanawha. Roosevelt, The Winning of 
the West, 1, 225-233. 

7. The Capture of Kaskaskia. Thwaites, How George Rogers Clark 
Won the Northwest, 18-33. 

8. Clark's March across the "Downed Lands." Roosevelt, The 
Winning of the West, II, 69-76. 

9. The Fall of Vincennes. Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, 
II, 77-85. 

10. Simon Kenton's Adventure. Roosevelt, The Winning of the 
West, II, 2.5-30. 

11. Deeds of Daring on the Border. Roosevelt, The Winning of (he 
West, III, 131-141. 

12. The Battle of the Blue Licks. Roosevelt, The Winning of the 
West, III, 197-207. 

13. The Ordinance of 1787. Fiske, The Critical Period of American 
History, 203-207. 

14. The Story of St. Clair's Defeat. Roosevelt, The Winning of the 
West, IV, 35-47. 

15. How Anthony Wayne Won Ohio from the Indians. Roosevelt, 
The Winning of the West, IV, 67-97. 

Tliere are many other stirring tales of Indian warfare and frontier 
life in Roosevelt, The Winning of the West. 



REFERENCES 195 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Street, The Settler; Gallagher, The Mothers of the West; 
\'enable, Johnny Appleseed. 

Novels: Churchill, The Crossing; Thompson, Alice of Old Vincennes; 
Grey, Betty Zone; Bird, Nick of the Woods; Gray, Kentucky Chronicle; 
Paulding, Westward Ho; Cooper, The Pioneers; Hale, East and West. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. What towns in the Mississippi valley were founded by the French? 

2. Draw a Une on the map along the watershed between the rivers 
flowing to the Atlantic Ocean and those tributary to the Mississippi. 

3. What geographical reasons account for the greatness of Pitts- 
burgh ? 

4. Find out Daniel Boone's part in the Braddock expedition. What 
motives led the first settlers into Kentucky and Tennessee? In what 
ways were Boone and Sevier aUke? In what respects did they differ? 

5.' Find upon the map the principal scenes of Indian fighting during 
the Revolution. 

6. Why did George Rogers Clark lead his expedition into the North- 
west? Why was his success a matter of great importance? 

7. What is meant by the "public land"? What was its origin? What 
is the "Western Reserve"? Does the county in which you live have an 
officer called the recorder of deeds? If so, what are his duties? 

8. Compare a county map of Pennsylvania or Virginia with one of 
Michigan or Kansas; how do you account for the dilTerence in the shape 
of the counties? 

9. ^\^lat territories has the United States now? How are they 
governed? Why was the Ordinance of 1787 a very important law? 

10. What were the advantages of life on the frontier? What were 
its disadvantages? If you had lived in the time of the Revolution would 
you have preferred to live in Philadelphia or in Kentucky? Why? What 
did the frontiersmen do for us? 



CHAPTER X 



The Federalist Period 



The first 

presidential 

election 



Washington 
inaugurated 



Starting the Government. — As soon as enough states had 
ratified the Constitution to make it the law of the land, a 
day was set for the election of a congress and a president. 
Each state elected its senators and representatives and appointed 
the presidential electors who were to choose the president. 
There was no doubt about the man upon whom their choice 
would fall. Every elector voted for Washington because he 
was the most loved and trusted man in America. John Adams 
was made the first vice-president. 

The fourth of March, 1789, was the day appointed for the 
organization of the new government, but traveling was slow 
and difficult in those days and it was April before a quorum 
of Congress reached New York which was then the capital 
of the nation. The first work of Congress was to count the 
electoral votes and to send a message posthaste to Mount 
Vernon to notify Washington of his election. The president 
elect started at once for New York. His journey thither was 
a triumphal procession. At Philadelphia the church bells 
rang, at Trenton girls strewed flowers in his path, and the 
night he reached New York the sky was red with bonfires. 
On April 30th, on the balcony of Federal Hall, Washington 
took the oath of office in the presence of a great crowd which 
shouted, "Long live George Washington, President of the 
United States." 

Congress next established executive departments to aid 
the president in his work. Washington appointed Thomas 
The Cabinet Jefi"erson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, his 
first secretary of state. Alexander Hamilton, who had worked 
so hard to secure the ratification of the Constitution, was 
made the first secretary of the treasury. General Henry 
Knox who commanded the artillery in Washington's army 
during the Revolution became secretary of war, and Edmund 
Randolph of Virginia was named as the first attorney-general. 

196 



STARTING THE GOVERNMENT 



197 




The First Cabinet 

From left to right — President Washington; Thomas Jefiferson, Secretary of State; 
Henry Knox, Secretary of War; Edward Randolph, Attorney-General; Alexander Hamil- 
ton, Secretary of the Treasury. 

President Washington soon began to ask these men to meet 
with him from time to time to talk over the pubHc business. 



198 



THE FEDERALIST PERIOD 



United 

States 
courts 



The need 
of money 



The tariff 



Direct and 

indirect 

taxes 



This was the beginning of the president's cabinet. Since Wash- 
ington was president the cabinet has grown from four members 
to ten by the appointment of a postmaster-general, and secre- 
taries of the navy, interior, agriculture, commerce, and labor. 

The judicial department of the goverrmient was the last 
to be organized. The Constitution says that the judicial 
power shall be vested in one Supreme Court and in such lower 
courts as Congress shall establish. Before the close of 1789 
Congress had created circuit and district courts below the 
Supreme Court. One of President Washington's duties was 
to appoint the judges of all the United States courts. John 
Jay of New York was made the first chief justice of the 
Supreme Court. 

Putting the Finances of the Nation in Sound Condition. — 
Wlien Washington became president the United States had 
an empty treasury and a large public debt which had been 
incurred during the Revolution. The credit of the country 
was at its lowest ebb. The first need of the new government 
was money to meet its running expenses and to pay the inter- 
est on the public debt. One of the first laws passed by Congress 
was an act laying a duty or tax upon various articles imported 
into the United States. A list of dutiable goods with the rate 
of tax upon each is called a tariff. A tariff act is a law making 
such a list, though we often use the word tariff to express the 
rate of duty upon imported goods as, for example, when we 
speak of a "high tariff" or a "low tariff." The average rate 
of duty laid by the tariff act of 1789 was only a little more 
than eight per cent, a very low tariff in comparison with the 
one we have at present. 

A tax is a sum of money paid by the citizen for the support 
of the government. It may be direct or indirect. A direct 
tax is a tax which must be paid by the person upon whom it 
is assessed, such as a tax upon a house which a man owns and 
lives in. An indirect tax is one which the taxpayer shifts 
upon others, as when an importer or manufacturer adds the 
tax which he has paid, upon the goods he imports or makes, 
to their price when he sells them and in this way makes his 
customers pay it. From 1789 until the last few years it was 
the policy of the United States to raise nearly all its revenue 
by indirect taxes. 



FINANCES OF THE NATION 



199 



In 1791, at the suggestion of Hamilton, Congress laid a 
tax of a few cents a gallon upon all liquor distilled in the 
United States. Such a tax upon goods made within the country The excise 
is called an excise or internal revenue tax. The excise law 
of 1791 was very unpopular everywhere, but it was especially 
hated in western Pennsylvania. The farmers of that region 
had no market for their grain. It cost too much to haul it to 
the eastern seaports and the Spaniards who controlled New 
Orleans had closed the Mississippi to their trade. But the 
whiskey which they made ^_^„,,^ , ^ ^^ 



out of their corn and rye 
found a ready market at 
home or in the settlement ':> 
dovv-^n the Ohio River. 
Under these conditions the 
people of western Pennsyl- 
vania thought that the 
excise was very unjust, and 
in 1794 they refused to pay 
it and drove away the men 
sent to collect it. A secon I 
officer was soundly flogged 
Washington promptly sent 
several thousand militia to 
restore order and collect the 
tax. This show of force was 




The 

Whiskey 

Insurrection 



Flogging a Revenue Oflacer 



sufficient, and the troops met with no resistance. The collapse 
of the Whiskey Insurrection, as the uprising against the excise 
law in western Pennsylvania is called, taught our people the 
wholesome lesson that at last they had a government with power 
to enforce the laws which their own representatives had made. 
Soon after Washington became president, Congress asked 
the secretary of the treasury to suggest a plan for the pay- 
ment of the debt contracted during the Revolution. Hamilton The national 
found that the United States owed about $40,000,000 to its *^^^* 
own people and nearly $12,000,000 more in France, Holland, 
and Spain. A national debt of $52,000,000 would not seem 
very large now, but it was an enormous sum in those days. 
For a long time the creditors of the government had been 
clamoring in vain for their pay. The people had lost faith in 



200 



THE FEDERALIST PERIOD 



Hamilton's 
policy 



the ability of the nation to pay what it owed and many of them 
had sold the notes and other certificates of debt which they 
held for one-fourth of their face value. It was Hamilton's task 
to restore the financial honor and good name of his country. 

Hamilton's plan was to borrow enough money by selling 
new bonds of the government to pay all the old debt. At 
first there was much opposition to this proposal. Every one 
agreed that the foreign debt ought to be paid in full, but many 
men thought that the owners of the depreciated notes of the 
government at home ought to receive only the amount which 
they had paid for them. But Hamilton persuaded Congress 
that the only honest course for the nation to take was to keep 
its word by paying all that it had promised to pay. He suc- 
ceeded in getting the rich men of the country to buy the new 
bonds, and with the money thus obtained he paid the old debts. 
As the new bonds were not due for many years the government 
gained time in which to save enough money out of the taxes 
to pay them when they matured. 

At this time some of the states were heavily in debt. 
Hamilton next proposed that the debts of the states should 
be paid by the United States. He said this ought to be done 
because the states got into debt by fighting for the common 
cause during the Revolution. He knew also that the assump- 
tion of the state debts would add to the influence and authority 
of the national government, whose power he wished to exalt. 
There was much opposition to this proposal, especially in the 
South where the state debts were much smaller than those of 
the northern states. It happened that just at this time Congress 
was considering the permanent location of the national capital. 
Both sections wanted it. A deal was made by which enough 
southern representatives voted to assmne the state debts to 
carry that proposal and in return enough northern men voted 
for a southern capital to locate it in that section. It was 
agreed that the national capital should be in Philadelphia 
from 1790 until 1800 and that then it should be moved to a 
district ten miles square upon the banks of the Potomac. 
This was the origin of the District of Columbia. 

The first effect of Hamilton's plan for paying the debts 
Public credit ^^^ ^^ ^^^ f^^' ^^^ ^^^ government the gratitude of all the 
established creditors of the nation and of the states. All these people 



The state 

debts 

assumed 



BEGINNING OF POLITICAL PARTIES 



201 






The first 
Bank of the 
United 
States 



' ^"^ ^,^i? 






} ^^ J 






were kindly disposed toward a government which paid them 
in full the money which they had almost lost hope of ever 
seeing again. What is even more important, all the rich and 
influential men who bought the new bonds of the nation became 
the warm friends and supporters of the government under the 
Constitution, because the value of their investments depended 
upon its success. In these ways Hamilton's policy restored 
the credit of the nation and helped establish its new govern- 
ment in the confidence of the people. 

At Hamilton's suggestion a mint was established in Phila- 
delphia at which the 
United States began to 
coin its own money. He 
also proposed the crea- 
tion of a national bank 
to help the government 
collect and pay out 
money, to care for its 
cash on hand, and to 
issue bank notes which 
the people used as paper 
money. In spite of great 
opposition this proposal 
was carried in 1791, and 
the first Bank of the United States was set up in Phila- 
delphia with branches in other cities. This bank did much 
to win the business men of the country to the support of the 
new government. Our country owes a great debt to Alexander 
Hamilton for putting its finances on a sound basis. His 
work was so well done that a large part of the financial busi- 
ness of our government is still carried on very much as he 
planned it. 

The Beginning of Political Parties. — Almost every measure 
that Hamilton proposed in his effort to restore the financial 
credit of the country was vigorously opposed in Congress and What is a 
among the people. In the struggle which resulted in the political 
adoption of his plans we find the beginning of political parties ^' 
in the United States. A political party is a part of the people 
who hold the same opinions upon public questions and who 
work together in politics to make these opinions the policy of 



The First Bank of the United States 



202 



THE FEDERALIST PERIOD 



Our first 
parties 



Federalists 



the government. We have usually had two great political 
parties in our history and sometimes one or more smaller 
ones. 

The Federalists and the Republicans were our first great 
national parties under the Constitution. The Federalists 
followed Hamilton and favored the adoption of his plans. 
The men who opposed Hamilton's financial measures, like the 
assumption of the state debts and the establishment of a 
national bank, were led by Thomas Jefferson. They called 

themselves Republi- 
cans, though they were 
often called Demo- 
cratic-Republicans. 
The early Republican 
party of Jefferson's 
time must not be con- 
fused with the Repub- 
lican party of the pres- 
ent which was organ- 
ized in 1854 to oppose 
the further extension 
of slavery. 

While the Federal- 
ists and the early Re- 
l^ublicans fought their 
first political battles 
over Hamilton's finan- 
cial measures, they dif- 
fered widely in other 
vital respects. The 
Federahsts distrusted 
the fitness of the people to govern themselves. They be- 
lieved in government of the people, for the people, by 
"the rich, the well-born, and the able" part of the people, 
as one of their foremost leaders said. The Federalists were 
aristocratic. Most of the men of wealth and education were in 
their ranks. They were strong in the cities and in the com- 
mercial states. Hamilton, John Adams, and John Jay were 
their a})lest leaders, and President Washington sympathized 
with their views. 




John Jay 



BEGINNING OF POLITICAL PARTIES 



203 



Loose and 
strict con- 
struction of 
the Consti- 
tution 



The early Republicans, on th(^ other hand, were democratic 
in their opinions. They believed in the good sense of the 
common people and thought that the government would be Republicans 
safer in their hands than under the control of rich men, who 
might put their own interests ahead of the common good. 
The Republicans were especially strong in the country districts 
and on the frontier. Thomas Jefferson was the father of this 
party, and James Madison, Albert Gallatin, and James Monroe 
were other promi- 
nent leaders in its 
history. 

In the Constitu- 
tion the people have 
given certain powers 
to their government. 
The Federalists and 
the early Republi- 
cans differed widely 
in their understand- 
ing of the extent of 
these powers. The 
Constitution, for ex- 
ample, says nothing 
about the establish- 
ment of a national 
bank but it gives 
Congress the power 
to tax and to borrow 
money. Hamilton 
and his party con- 
tended that because a national bank would be useful to 
the goverrmient in taking care of its money Congress had 
the right to establish it. This view, that the Constitu- 
tion gives the government powers that are not distinctly 
named in it but that may be implied from what is said, is 
called loose construction. Jefferson and his followers, on the 
other hand, held that because the power to set up a national 
bank was not mentioned in the Constitution Congress had no 
right to establish one. This way of looking at the Constitution 
literally is called strict construction of it. The Federalists were 




Albert Gallatin 



204 



THE FEDERALIST PERIOD 



A despotic 
king 



loose constructionists while the Republicans were believers in 
strict construction. The two great parties of our country have 
always disagreed upon this question. The Republicans of 
today are loose constructionists, while the present Democrats 
are more favorable to the strict construction views of Thomas 
Jefferson. But when any party is in power it is apt to favor 
a more liberal interpretation of the Constitution than when 
it is out of power, because loose construction tends to exalt 

the authority of the national 
government. 

The French Revolution 
and War in Europe. — Six days 
after Washington became 
president in 1789 a great 
revolution broke out in 
France. The French people 
had long borne many grievous 
wrongs. The government of 
their country was despotic 
and oppressive in the extreme. 
Their property, their liberty, 
and even their lives could be 
taken from them at the whim 
of the king. The king alone 
could impose taxes, and 
most of the kings of France 
had used this power to squan- 
der the money of their people in wars of aggression against the 
neighboring countries and upon an extravagant and wicked 
court. The reigning king, Louis XVI, was a man of good 
intentions but weak, irresolute, and utterly unfit for the posi- 
tion which he held. 

Nearly one- half of all the land and a large part of all the 
other wealth in France belonged to the nobility and the church. 
The nobles Yet the nobles and the higher clergy were not required to 
and the pg^y taxes as other people were, and they lived in ease and 
luxury upon the rents of their estates. The nobles had 
many other special privileges. They were proud and often 
insolent to the common people whose labor supported them in 
idleness. 




King Louis XVI of France 



clergy 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 205 

The lot of the great mass of the common people of France 
was a very hard one. There were some prosperous merchants 
and professional men in the cities, but the vast majority of The common 
Frenchmen were peasant farmers who passed their lives in people 
unceasing toil upon the land only to see the fruits of their labor 
taken from them by the king, the noble landowners, and the 
church. If their crops failed for a single season they faced 
starvation. 

At this time the condition of the people almost everywhere 
upon the continent of Europe was little if any better than it 
was in France. But in France men were learning to think. French 
Great writers were arousing the people to a sense of the in- thinkers and 
justice in their lives. "Man was born free and is everywhere 
in chains," said one of them. Men were beginning to hate 
these chains and to think of breaking them. The success of the 
American Revolution encouraged many ardent young French- 
men to dream of winning freedom for their own people. 

In 1789 the French government was face to face with 
bankruptcy. For the first time in one hundred and seventy- 
five years the king called the representatives of the people The 
together in the hope that they would find a way to furnish beginning 
him with more money. But instead of doing as the king wished, Rgvohition 
these representatives took the government into their own 
hands, swept away the special privileges of the nobles and the 
church, and while they permitted the king to keep his throne 
for a time, they took away most of his power. 

The other despotic kings in Europe were afraid that the 
revolutionary ideas of France would spread to their countries. 
To prevent this and to restore the lost rights of the French War in 
king and his nobles, many of whom had fled to them, the Europe 
Prussians and the Austrians invaded France in 1792. Because 
the French people suspected that their king wanted the invaders 
of their country to win, they deposed him and declared France 
a republic. Early in 1793 they brought the king to trial and 
condemned him to death. The horror felt in England at the 
execution of Louis XVI helped to bring that country into the 
war against France in 1793. For the next twenty-two years 
France and England were at war nearly all the time — a fact 
that was destined to have a very great influence upon the his- 
tory of the United States. 



206 



THE FEDERALIST PERIOD 



How Washington Kept Our Country Out of War. — With 
England and France at war in 1793 our government faced a 
Neutrality very difficult situation. We had a treaty of alliance with 
France, and the French, who had aided us during the Revolu- 
tion, expected us to help them in return. If we did as they 
desired, our action was certain to bring on another war with 
England. But the United States was in no condition for war 
at this time. Its greatest need was a long period of peace in 
which the government under the Constitution could take root 

in the confidence and affec- 
tion of the people. After 
consulting the members of 
his cabinet Washington 
decided that our treaty with 
France did not bind us to 
help that country unless her 
possessions in the West 
Indies were attacked. 
Accordingly, the president 
issued a proclamation of 
neutrality, in which he said 
that the United States 
would not side with either 
France or England but 
would treat both of them 
alike. 

This action of Wash- 
ington was not approved 
by all the people. Many 
of them still hated England, while they recalled with gratitude 
the aid of France in the Revolution. Many Americans 
sjonpathized with the French in their struggle for liberty 
and hailed with joy the establishment of a republic in 
France. This feeling was especially strong among the political 
followers of Thomas Jefferson who rejoiced to see the French 
accepting the democratic principles of their party. The Fed- 
eralists, on the other hand, had little confidence in government 
by the people anywhere, and they were horrified at the wild 
excesses of the revolutionists in France. They heartily ap- 
proved of Washington's decision to keep out of the war. The 




Our people 
are divided 
in opinion 



From the Portrait hy Gilbert Stuart. 
President Washington 



HOW WASHINGTON PREVENTED WAR 



207 



French Revolution and the war in Europe did much to widen 
the breach between the rising poUtical parties in the United 
States. 

Early in 1793 Genet, the first minister to the United States 
from the new French republic, landed at Charleston, South 
Carolina. He came to draw our country into a war with The mission 
England. As he journeyed toward the capital the people °^ Genet 
welcomed him with open arms. He rode into Philadelphia 
escorted by a vast crowd. The Republicans were wild with 
enthusiasm for France. They even aped the French revolu- 




Impressing American Seamen 

tionists in discarding all forms of address except the simple 
title, "citizen," which they gave to every one. Genet's head 
was turned by the warmth of his reception in America. When 
he found that Washington was steadfast in his purpose not to 
enter the war, he blustered and stormed and even threatened 
to appeal to the people against the president. For a time 
Washington was very patient with Genet; but when Genet 
fitted out a ship of war and sent it to sea, after promising not 
to do so, the president promptly asked the French government 
to recall him. France soon sent a wiser minister to the United 
States. 



208 



THE FEDERALIST PERIOD 



Trouble with 
England 



The Jay 
Treaty 
averts war 



The wisdom 
of Wash- 
ington 



The Farewell 
Address 



Washington's firmness kept our country from fighting 
England to aid the French. In the meantime the conduct of 
England brought us to the verge of a war with her in defense 
of our own rights. Ever since 1783 England had refused to 
give up the posts on our northern frontier. The frontiersmen 
believed that the British incited the Indians to attack them. 
After war broke out between France and England in 1793,^ 
England began to trouble our commerce. She forbade our trade 
with the French West Indies and captured our ships anywhere 
that she could find them if they had French goods on board. 
Worse even than this, she impressed or seized sailors on our 
ships on the ground that they were Englishmen and forced 
them to serve in her navy. For these reasons many of our 
people clamored for war with England. 

But Washington knew that the great need of the country 
was time in which to grow strong, and he was determined that 
there should be no war if he could prevent it by honorable 
means. In 1794 he sent John Jay, the chief justice, to England 
to try to make a treaty of friendship and commerce with that 
country. Before the end of the year Jay signed a treaty in 
London in which the British government agreed to give up the 
northern frontier posts and to pay for American vessels that 
had been captured illegally. The British also agreed to permit 
i,he United States to trade with their West Indian colonies, 
but under conditions so unjust that this part of the treaty was 
rejected by our Senate. Nothing was said about the impress- 
ment of our sailors or about the right of our people to trade 
with a nation with which England was at war. 

In the Jay Treaty England fell far short of yielding every- 
thing that Washington wanted, but he believed that this treaty 
was better than a war and with some difficulty he persuaded 
the Senate to ratify it. At first the Jay Treaty was very 
unpopular, and Washington was grossly abused for making it. 
But in tim(5 nearly every one came to see his wisdom in keep- 
ing the infant republic out of war. 

The Two Federalist Presidents. — Washington had reluc- 
tantly accepted a second term, and as it drew to a close he 
resolved to retire from public life to the quiet of his home at 
Mount Vernon. In September, 1796, he announced this 
decision to his countrymen in his famous Farewell Address. 



\Vashin(it(>n's Skcum) InaigukatioiN— 179:^> 
On March 4, ITO:!, Wasliington began his second Presidential 
term by taking the oath of office at the State House, Philadelphia, 
which was then the capital of the nation. An eye-witness of the 
event writes: "\\ashington ])roceeded to the State House in an 
elegant coach drawn by six sui)erl) white horses. Upon his arrival, 
two gentlemen with white wands with some difficulty opened a 
passageway through the throng for the President. W'ashingtoi! 
was dressed in black velvet with black silk stockings and diamond 
knee buckles, and wore a dress sword."' 



TWO FEDERALIST PRESIDENTS 209 



^^ ^'^^3 



<2^c/-or3-«. 



/^ttC^ /^c^^ o^C.^2 

Cc^P^-c^^yr^ iWi-iJV^ Ou^^^^.^^ ^^/^ <::^^^-2ii^ yHya^^-c^A-^^^ . 

y^-SI>ii^*0 ^^C^-^*^^ X^C-v^**_^-«) oy^J^.^Xi-^J^i.^t.^f»^ '^^rrr/L 

Washington's Last Letter 

Washington's refusal to seek a third term set an example 
which has been followed by nearly all of his successors, none 
of whom has occupied the presidential chair more than two 
terms. 

Washington's Farewell Address was filled with the purest 
14 



210 



THE FEDERALIST PERIOD 



A picture of 
Washington 



and wisest advice to his countrymen. He urged them to cherish 
the Constitution, to promote education, to avoid debt, to beware 
of the evil effects of party spirit, and to keep out of entanghng 
alhances with other nations. "Let there be no sectionalism," 
he said, "no North, South, East, or West; you are all depend- 
ent one on another, and should be one in union. In a word, 
be a nation, be Americans, and be true to yourselves." 

After less than three years of the quiet life he loved, at 

his home on the bank 
of the Potomac, 
Washington died on 
December 14, 1799. 
His noble character 
and his priceless ser- 
vices to his country 
have never been bet- 
ter pictured than in 
the words of his biog- 
rapher. Lodge, who 
says: 

"I see in Wash- 
ington a great soldier 
who fought a trying 
war to a successful 
end impossible with- 
out him; a great 
statesman who did 
more than all other 
men to lay the foun- 
dations of a republic 
which has endured in prosperity for more than a century. 
I find in him a marvelous judgment which was never at 
fault, a penetrating vision which beheld the future of 
America when it was dim to other eyes, a great intellec- 
tual force, a will of iron, an unyielding grasp of facts, and 
an unequaled strength of patriotic purpose. I see in him 
a pure and high-minded gentleman of dauntless courage 
and stainless honor, simple and stately of manner, kind and 
generous of heart." 

Washington had been chosen to the presidency without 




President John Adams 



TROUBLES WITH FRANCE 211 

opposition and his refusal of a third term was followed by the 

first contested presidential campaign in our history. There The election 

were no national conventions like those which select candidates °^ ^''^^ 

for the presidency now, but John Adams was the recognized 

candidate of the Federalists while Thomas Jefferson was the 

choice of the Republicans. Adams was elected after a very 

close contest, and Jefferson became vice-president. 

John Adams, who was president a single term, from 1797 
to 1801, had a long and distinguished career. He first won 
fame as a defender of the rights of the colonists. He was a John Adams 
member of the Continental Congress and a champion of the 
Declaration of Independence. He helped make the treaty of 
peace at the close of the Revolution, was our first minister to 
England, and came home to be vice-president with Washing- 
ton. Adams was an honest, very etble, and intensely patriotic 
man. But he was vain and jealous in disposition, tactless and 
stubborn in dealing with men, plain spoken and sometimes 
ungracious in manner. Because of these traits he was never 
very popular. The most serious question of his administration 
grew out of our troubled relations with France. 

Our Troubles with France. — France was sorely displeased 
by Washington's proclamation of neutrality and she became 
still more angry when Jay's Treaty robbed her of the hope The anger of 
that the United States might be drawn into a war with England. °^ France 
She declared that this treaty released her from her alliance with 
us and began to punish us for making it by seizing our ships. 
James Monroe, our minister to France and a Republican who 
sympathized deeply with the French, failed to protect our 
rights, and Washington recalled him in disgrace and sent 
Charles C. Pinckney to take his place. The French govern- 
ment refused to have anything to do with Pinckney and warned 
liim to leave the country. 

The news of this insult to our minister reached President 
Adams three weeks after his inauguration, in 1797. Adams 
called Congress together at once, told it that France had Adams tries 
treated us "neither as allies nor as friends," and urged it to *° avoid war 
provide for the defense of our commerce. At the same time 
in his desire to avoid war with our friend of the Revolution, 
the president decided to send Pinckney, John Marshall, and 
Elbridge Gerry to France to make one more effort to come to 



212 



THE FEDERALIST PERIOD 



a peaceful understanding with that country. But people 
and news traveled slowly in those days, and it was nearly 
a year before the result of this mission was known in 
America. 

When Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry reached Paris, 

Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, would not see them 

The X, Y, Z but sent three agents, who were known in America as X, Y, 

affair a^d Z, to call upon them. These agents hinted plainly that 

the Americans must apologize for what President Adams had 

said about France, 
bribe the French 
ministers, and loan 
money to the French 
government. Our 
representatives said 
they could not do 
these things. But the 
French agents con- 
tinued to urge and 
threaten them. One 
day Mr. X said, 
"Gentlemen, you do 
not speak to the 
point. It is money; 
it is expected that 
you will offer money." 
Our envoys replied 
that they had already 
answered that point 
T u iv/r t, ,1 very exphcitly. "No," 

John Marshall i • i , ,r -x^ it 

replied Mr. X, you 
have not. What is your answer?" "It is no; no; no; not 
a sixpence," said the Americans. 

When the report of our envoys was published in America 
a flame of indignation swept over the country. President 
We prepare Adams said, "I will never send another minister to France 
to fight without assurance that he will be received, respected, and 

honored as the representative of a free, powerful, and inde- 
pendent nation." Pinckney's words, "Millions for defense, but 
not one cent for tribute," were repeated on every hand. 




FALL OF THE FEDERALISTS 



213 



Preparations for war were begun at once. The Department of 
the Navy was organized and the first secretary of the navy 
was appointed. Plans were made for raising an army, and 
Washington was appointed to command it. 

Fortunately we were never obliged to declare war upon 
France although actual fighting took place between the ships 
of the two nations. When he saw that America would fight, But peace is 
Talleyi'and said he would receive a minister from the United restored 
States with all due re- 
spect. Just at this 
time Napoleon Bona- 
parte overthrew the 
existing French govern- 
ment and rose to su- 
preme power in France. 
He had no desire for 
a war with America, 
and in 1800 a treaty 
was made between 
France and the 
United States which 
restored friendly rela- 
tions between the two 
countries. 

The Fall of the 
Federalists. — The feel- 
ing between the Fed- 
eralists and the Repub- 
hcans was very bitter 
when Adams was pres- 
ident. The people had 

quickly forgotten Washington's advice to beware of the 
evil effects of party spirit. Never have the speakers and 
the newspapers of rival political parties been more abusive 
than they were at this time. Many of the most violent 
Republican politicians and editors were of French, English, 
or Irish birth, and some of these foreigners were not even 
naturalized. The Federalists thought that such men were 
very dangerous. 

The first effect of the X, Y, Z affair was to strengthen the 




From the painting by Paul Hippolyte Delaj-oche in the . ■£ " * 
collection of the Countess of Sandwicli. StrilC 

Napoleon Bonaparte 



214 



THE FEDERALIST PERIOD 



A Federalist 
mistake 



The Alien 
and Sedition 
Acts 



Virginia and 
Kentucky 
denounce 
these laws 



The election 
of 1800 



Federalist party. Everywhere the people approved the patri- 
'otic stand of President Adams. The Republicans who had 
always favored the French now had little to say. But the Fed- 
eralists made a very unwise use of their new power. They 
resolved to drive out of the country or to silence the foreigners 
and the Republican editors who were criticising and often 
abusing the government. 

With this end in view the Federalist Congress passed two 
important laws in 1798. The Alien Act gave the president the 
power to expel from the country any unnaturalized foreigner 
whom he thought dangerous to the government. The Sedition 
Act made it a crime punishable by fine and imprisonment to 
speak or write anything tending to make the people think ill 
of the government. The Alien Act was never enforced, but 
the Sedition Act was used to punish a number of abusive 
Republican editors. 

The Alien and Sedition Acts were angrily denounced by 
the Republicans. The legislature of Virginia declared that 
these acts violated the Constitution. In resolutions written 
by Madison, it said that the Constitution is an agreement or 
compact between the states and that "when Congress passes 
a law contrary to the Constitution it is the duty of the states 
to interfere." The legislature of Kentucky took the same 
position in resolutions which came fi'om the pen of Jefferson. 
Kentucky further declared that each state may judge for itself 
whether Congress has the power to pass a law, and may nullify 
or stop the enforcement within its borders of any federal law 
that it thinks unconstitutional. As we shall see later, the ideas 
expressed in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions were 
destined to cause serious trouble in the United States. 

The passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts and the attempt 
to enforce the Sedition Act had very serious results for the 
Federalists. The people held that party responsil^le for these 
obnoxious laws and drove it from power in the election of 1800. 
Since that time the United States has never tried in time of 
peace to regulate what its citizens should think or say about 
the government. The Federalists never won an election after 
their defeat in 1800, and some years later the party disappeared. 

It was fortunate for our country that the Federalists were 
in power from 1789 to 1801. At that time the people needed 



REFERENCES 215 

more law and order rather than more hberty or democracy. Our debt to 
The Federahst party gave the nation a well-organized govern- *^® Federal- 
ment, restored its financial credit, and established a wise policy 
in dealing with other countries. Then its work was done. 
Its downfall was equally fortunate for the country, for its 
leaders did not trust the people or believe them fit to govern 
themselves. A more democratic party was needed to guide 
the destinies of the nation in the nineteenth century. 

REFERENCES. 

Bassett, The Federalist Sydem; Channing, History of the United 
States, Vol. IV; Johnson, Union and Democracy; Hart, The Formation 
of the Union; Walker, The Making of the Nation; Wilson, History of the 
American People, Vol. Ill; Schouler, History of the United States, Vol. I; 
McMaster, History of the People of the United States, Vols. I, II. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Inauguration of Washington. McMaster, History of the 
People of the United States, I, 538-540. 

2. The Early Life of Hamilton. McMaster, History of the People 
of the United States, I, 125-126. 

3. Thomas Jefferson, The Republican Leader. Schouler, History 
of the United States, I, 189-192. 

4. The Whiskey Insurrection. Bassett, The Federalist System, 
101-116. 

5. The Causes of the French Revolution. Myers, General History, 
627-632; or Robinson, History of Western Europe, 537-557; or Harding, 
New Mediaeval and Modern History, 467-481. 

6. American Enthusiasm for the French Revolution. McMaster, 
History of the People of the United States, II, 89-95. 

7. The Mission of Citizen Genet. Bassett, The Federalist System, 
89-98. 

< 8. A Defense of the Jay Treaty. Hart, American History Told by 
Contemporaries, III, 315-319. 

9. A Word Picture of Washington. Lodge, George Washington, II, 
304-395. 

10. The X, Y, Z Correspondence. Hart, American History Told by 
Contemporaries, III, 322-326. 

11. The Enforcement of the Sedition Act. Bassett, The Federalist 
System, 261-264. 

12. A Character Sketcli of John Adams. Schouler, History of the 
United States, I, 505-512. 



216 THE FEDERALIST PERIOD 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Whittier, The Vow of Washington; Paine, Adams and Lib- 
erty; Hopkinson, Hail, Columbia. 

Stories: Seawall, Little Jarvis; Mitchell, The Red City; Cooper, 
Miles Wallingford; Atherton, The Conqueror; Brackenridge, Modern 
Chivalry; Goodloe, Calvert of Strathore; Barr, The Maid of Maiden Lane; 
Cooke, Leather Stocking and Silk; Kennedy, Swallow Baryi. 

Biographies: Lodge, George Washington; Morse, John Adams; 
Lodge, Alexander Hamilton; Morse, Thomas Jefferson; Gay, James 
Madison. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Who are the members of the present cabinet? Must the president 
be guided by the advice of his cabinet? 

2. Name the United States courts lower than the Supreme Court. 
Who is now chief justice of the Supreme Court? 

3. Find out the difference between a specific and an ad valorem duty. 
Which of our present political parties favors a high protective tariff? 

4. Define the words debtor, creditor, bond, excise. What is a bank? 
What kinds of business does it do? What banks now issue paper money? 

5. Do you believe in the political opinions of Hamilton or in those 
of Jefferson? Why? Which of our present political parties most resembles 
the Republicans of Jefferson's time? 

6. What happened in Russia in 1917? Do you see any resemblance 
between this event and the French Revolution? What form of government 
existed in France at the time of the X, Y, Z Affair? 

7. If Congress passes an act that it has no power to pass what is the 
rightful remedy? 

8. Name three great leaders of the Federalists. What did each do for 
our country? What happened in 1789? In 1793? In 1798? Connect 
three events with 1794. 

9. Questions for debate: Should we have helped the French in 1793? 
Should the Jay Treatj^ have been ratified? Should people have the right 
to criticise the government at all times? 



CHAPTER XI 
The Louisiana Purchase 

The Triumph of Democracy. — The election of 1800 was a 
turning point in the history of the United States. For twelve 
years the Federalists had wisely ruled the young nation. But A political 
as President Adams' term of office drew to a close it was evident ^^^o^^tion 
that his party had outlived its usefulness. Its leaders were 
quarreling among themselves. Its folly in passing the Alien 
and Sedition Acts was everywhere turning men against it. 
Moreover, their life in a new land tended to make the American 
people democratic at heart. The majority of them preferred 
the democratic ideas of Jefferson to the aristocratic notions of 
Adams and his party. The choice of Jefferson instead of 
Adams in the election of 1800 meant that henceforth the 
United States was to have a government of the people, by the 
people, and for the people. 

The election of 1800 revealed a serious defect in the Con- 
stitution and led to its correction. The Constitution provided 
that each presidential elector should vote for two persons for The twelfth 
president and that the person having the largest number of ^^^^^ ™^° 
votes should be president, if the number of votes cast for him 
was a majority of the whole number of electors. It also pro- 
vided that the person having the next largest number of votes 
should be the vice-president. The Republican party won the 
election of 1800 and every elector chosen by it voted for Jeffer- 
son. Unfortunately every Republican elector also voted for 
Aaron Burr. It was the plain intention of the Republicans to 
choose Jefferson president and Aaron Burr vice-president. 
But as the Constitution then read there was a tie vote, and it 
became the duty of the House of Representatives to qhoose a 
president from the two candidates having an equal number 
of votes. After a long and exciting contest the house elected 
Jefferson, and Burr accordingly became vice-president. In 
order to avoid such a situation in the future the twelfth amend- 
ment to the Constitution was adopted in 1804. This amend- 

217 



218 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



ment provides that the presidential electors shall vote by sep- 
arate ballots for president and vice-president, the method that 
is followed at the present time. In reality the choice of a 
president by the presidential electors has been a mere form ever 
since the contests between Adams and Jefferson, as the electors 
always vote for the candidates of their respective parties. 

Year by year the democratic principles of the early Repub- 
lican party became more firmly fixed in the hearts of the people. 
Three great Jefferson was easily reelected in 1804, and when his second 
Virginians term expired he was succeeded by his friend James Madison 
1801 to 1825 *^f Virginia, who had been his secretary of state. Madison was 




Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe 
These three great Virginians held in turn the oflice of President during the first 
quarter of the nineteenth century. They are sometimes called the Virginia dynasty in 
our history. 

president for two terms, from 1809 to 1817, and then gave way 
to James Monroe, another Virginian, who had been his secre- 
tary of state. Monroe served from 1817 to 1825. By 1820 
the Federalist party had disappeared and President Monroe 
was chosen for a second term that year without opposition. 
These three great Virginians, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, 
led the Republican party to victory and governed the country 
during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Before the 
end of that period the principles of democracy for which they 
stood were firmly established. By 1825 new questions were 
coming to the front and new parties under new leaders were 
beginning to arise. 



JEFFERSON, LEADER OF DEMOCRACY 



219 



Thomas Jeflferson, the Leader of Democracy. — Thomas 
Jefferson was the first president inaugurated in Washington. 
There was a great contrast between his inauguration and those Jefferson's 
of his predecessors. Both Washington and Adams were courtly inaugxiration 
in manner and fond of fine clothes and ceremony. Adams had 
gone to his inauguration in a coach drawn by six horses and had 
been sworn into office with pomp and parade. Jefferson's 
dress and manners were as plain and democratic as his political 





Monticello, Jefferson's Home in Virginia 



opinions. At noon on March 4, 1801, he left his lodgings in 
Washington, which was then a straggling village of perhaps 
five hundred inhabitants, and accompanied by a few friends 
walked to the capitol. Here he took the oath of office as 
president before John Marshall, who had recently been 
apix)inted chief justice of the Supreme Court by President 
Adams. 

It is the custom of our presidents when taking office to 
give an inaugural address in which they state their views and 



220 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



The prin- 
ciples of 
democracy 



Jefferson, 
the man 



His career 



purposes. In his address in 1801 Jefferson declared the prin- 
ciples of democratic government to be equal and exact justice 
to all men; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all 
nations, entangling alliances with none; a jealous care of the 
right of election by the people; absolute acquiescence in the 
decisions of the majority; the supremacy of the civil over the 
military authority; economy in the public expense; the honest 
payment of our debts; the diffusion of information; freedom 
in rehgion; freedom of the press; freedom of person under the 
protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially 
selected. "These principles," said Jefferson, "should be the 
creed of our political faith." 

The author of this democratic creed was one of the most 
interesting figures in our history. JefTerson was a very tall, 
awkward man, with a sunny face and a frank and friendly 
disposition. He had a scientific turn of mind and was always 
interested in new ideas and new inventions. He had confidence 
in the plain people and believed that the government ought 
to be in their hands and managed in their interest. Jefferson's 
wonderful power of winning people to his way of thinking made 
him one of our greatest political leaders. He hated war and 
declared that "Peace is our passion." He reduced the army 
from four thousand to two thousand five hundred men, laid up 
many of the ships of the navy, and hoped by the strictest 
economy to pay off the national debt. He was greatly aided 
in his financial plans by his able secretary of the treasury, 
Albert Gallatin of Pennsylvania. 

Thomas Jefferson had a long and wonderful public career. 
At the early age of twenty-six he was a member of the Virginia 
legislature. He wrote the Declaration of Independence when 
he was only thirty-three. He served in the Continental Con- 
gress, was governor of Virginia, and later a member of the 
Congress of the Confederation. Between 1784 and 1809 he 
was successively our minister to France, secretary of state, 
vice-president, and president for two terms. He did more 
than any other man of his time to teach the American people 
the principles of liberty, equality, and democracy. He was a 
great servant of the common good. He gloried in this service 
far more than in all the honors and offices that came to him. 
In the inscription he wrote for his own monument he does not 



OUR MISSISSIPPI TRADE 



221 



even mention the fact that he was president, but calls himself 
"Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American 
Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, 
and father of the University of Virginia." It is a remarkable 
coincidence that Jefferson and his friend and political rival, 
John Adams, both died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary 
of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, of which 
one was the author and the other the foremost champion. 

Our Mississippi Trade. — In spite of President Jefferson's 
ardent desire for peace our country came very near having a 
war during his first term. The act by which Jefferson averted 
this danger was so important and has had such a far-reaching 




A Loaded Flat Boat on the Way to New Orleans 

influence upon the history of the United States that we must' 
study it in some detail. 

The settlements in the West had been growing ever since 
the early years of the Revolution. By 1800 there were nearly 
four hundred thousand people west of the AUeghanies and this The western 
number was increasing by thousands every year. Nearly all '"^^^ *^ 
these western pioneers were farmers. Their greatest need soon 
came to be a market for the products of their farms. The 
Appalachian mountain system lay between them and the 
cities on the Atlantic seaboard. It cost more than their grain 
and pork were worth to haul them over the mountain roads to 
the eastern markets. The rivers were their only available 
roads to the outside world. So they loaded their corn, wheat, 
tobacco, and salt meats upon flat boats and barges which 



222 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



floated down the Ohio and the Mississippi to the port of New 
Orleans. 

Unfortunately for the western settlers NeXv Orleans and 
both banks of the lower Mississippi were in the possession of 
Spain a foreign power. Louisiana was first settled by France, but 

hampers our h^q^ country ceded it to Spain in 1763. The American boatmen 
who came down the Mississippi were entirelj^ at the mercy of 
the Spanish government at New Orleans. They were required 
to pay heavy tolls and duties and were often delayed and 
annoyed in the most vexing ways. This selfish policy of the 
Spanish authorities in Louisiana was a great hardship to the 
western settlers. Their tobacco sold for less than one-fourth 
of the price which tobacco was bringing in Virginia. The food 
products, so abundant in the West, were almost valueless 
because of the difficulty and expense of sending them to market. 
It is no wonder that the men of the West hated the Spaniards 
and appealed to the government of the United States to bring 
Spain to terms. 

For a long time the cry of the West for help met with no 
response. During the period of the Confederation Spain even 
offered us a favoraljle treaty of commerce if we would agree 
to the closing of the lower Mississippi to our trade. Many of 
the eastern merchants wanted to accept this proposition, and 
only the wrath of the westerners prevented our goverimient 
from agreeing to it. At last in 1795 Thomas Pinckney, our 
minister to Spain, succeeded in getting that country to agree 
to a treaty giving the citizens of the United States the free 
navigation of the Mississippi and the "right of deposit" at 
New Orleans. This was the right to land and store our goods in 
that city free of duty until they could be sent away on ocean- 
going ships. 

After the Pinckney Treaty was made, the trade on our 
western rivers grew rapidly. The Ohio and the Mississippi 
were covered with great flat boats and barges. Even sea-going 
ships were built at Pittsburgh and sent down these rivers to 
the ocean. The rising West was growing prosperous. By 
1802 one-fourth of the commerce of this United States went 
down the Mississippi. If any foreign power at New Orleans 
should ever try to close the lower Mississippi to the Americans 
who hved on the upper waters of that river there would be 



The 

Pinckney 

Treaty- 



The growing 
trade of our 
rising West 



THE COLONIAL SCHEME OF NAPOLEON 223 

grave danger that a host of angry frontiersmen would go down 
the Mississippi with their rifles to open a path to the sea. 
Such action would mean war. The country was brought face 
to face with this danger in 1802. 

The Colonial Scheme of Napoleon. — The ambition of 
Napoleon Bonaparte was responsible for the war cloud which 
hung over the Mississippi valley in 1803. Napoleon was a Napoleon 
brilliant but utterly unscrupulous young French soldier who Bonaparte 
overthrew the government of his country and made himself 
master of France in 1799. At that time France was at war 
with both Austria and England. Napoleon soon defeated the 
Austrians and in 1802 he made peace with England. He was 
now free to carry out a plan, which he had long had in mind, 
for rebuilding the colonial empire which France lost in the 
French and Indian War. 

With this end in view he had induced the king of Spain 
to recede Louisiana to France in 1800 by promising to give 
territory in Italy to a son-in-law of the Spanish monarch. France 
This bargain was kept ^ecret for a time and France did not at Lo'uiskna 
once take possession of Louisiana. Before occupying New 
Orleans Napoleon intended to reconquer Santo Domingo and 
make that island a stepping-stone between France and a new 
colonial empire in America. 

When the French Revolution began in 1789 Santo Domingo 
was a prosperous colony of France. It was a land of great 
sugar plantations owned by a few hundred rich French planters Insurrection 
and worked b}^ half a million negro slaves. One summer night i^ou^neo 
in 1789 the slaves rose in rebellion against their masters. A 
horrible massacre followed. Santo Domingo was wasted with 
fire and drenched with blood. After some years the govern- 
ment of the island passed into the hands of a negro chief named 
Toussaint Louverture, a man of great ability but almost as 
ambitious, crafty, and treacherous as Napoleon himself. 

Late in 1801, General Leclerc, Napoleon's brother-in-law, 
sailed from France with ten thousand soldiers to reconquer 
Santo Domingo, restore slavery in it, and then go on to Louisi- Napoleon 
ana. Fortunately for the United States, this expedition never ^.g^^-oyg^ ^jj^^ 
reached the mouth of the Mississippi. The negroes of Santo island 
Domingo fiercely resisted the French troops. After a time 
Toussaint was taken by treachery and sent to France to die 



224 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



Why 

Napoleon 
sold 
Louisiana 



Why we 

wanted 

Louisiana 



in a dungeon. But before the French could finish the conquest 
of the island the yellow fever swept away nearly all their 
soldiers. The effort to recover Santo Domingo was a failure. 
By 1803 it was evident that the treaty of peace 
between England and France was only a truce and that 
war was about to break out again between these coun- 
tries. Napoleon's dream of a revived French colonial empire 
in America was not to be realized. Santo Domingo was lost 

and there w^as great danger 
that when war began Eng- 
land would seize Louisiana. 
Moreover, Napoleon needed 
money. He was in just the 
mood to sell Louisiana if he 
could find a buyer. Just at 
this opportune moment the 
purchaser appeared. 

The Purchase of 

Louisiana. — When Jefferson 

heard of the secret treaty 

between France and Spain 

he was greatly disturbed. 

"The news," he said, "that 

Spain cedes Louisiana to 

France is very ominous to 

us." A little later he wrote 

to our minister at Paris: 

"There is on the globe one 

single spot, the possessor 

habitual enemy. It is New 

France takes possession of New 

ourselves to the British fleet and 




Signing the Louisiana Purchase Treaty 



and 



of which is our natural 
Orleans. The day that 
Orleans we must marry 
nation." 

Near the close of 1802 the news came that the Spanish 
authorities at New Orleans had suddenly withdrawn the right 
of deposit. This action threatened to ruin the commerce of 
the West. At once that section was ablaze with wrath. The 
pioneers of Kentucky and Tennessee talked fiercely of taking 
their rifles and marching upon New Orleans. The country was 
upon the verge of war. 




Ocean 



OCCUPATION OF LOUISIANA 



225 



The 

Louisiana 

Purchase 



But Jefferson was above all things a man of peace. In the We try to 
hope of preventing the threatened war he sent James Monroe ^J New 
to France to aid Robert R. Livingston, our minister in that 
country, in an effort to buy New Orleans. In the meantime, 
as we have seen, Napoleon was eager to sell what he had been 
unable to occupy. One day when Livingston and Talleyrand, 
Napoleon's minister of foreign affairs, were talking about the 
purchase of New Orleans, Talleyrand said, "What would you 
give for all Louisiana?" Livingston replied that he was daily 
expecting Monroe and that 
he would like to think about 
it until the latter arrived. 

Two days later Monroe 
reached Paris. Livingston 
and Monroe were not in- 
structed to buy all of Lou- 
isiana, but they knew its 
great value to their country 
and quickly came to terms 
with the French ministers. 
For $15,000,000 France 
agreed to cede to the United 
States the western half of 
the most valuable river val- 
ley in the world. The 
treaty which doubled the 
area of the United States 

1 -n ;r n 1 orvo Taking Possession of Louisiana 

was signed on May 2, 1803. 

As Livingston laid down his pen after signing his name 
he shook hands with Monroe and the French minister, and 
said, "We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of 
our lives." 

The Occupation and Exploration of Louisiana. — On 
November 30, 1803, the Spanish flag was lowered for the last 
time in New Orleans, and the French banner was run up in Our flag 
its stead as a symbol of the formal transfer of Louisiana to NewVrleans 
France. Just twenty days later a small force of American 
soldiers marched into the city to take possession of the terri- 
tory in the name of the United States. In the presence of a 
vast crowd the Tricolor of France was gently lowered from 
15 




226 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



Lewis and 
Clark sent 
to explore 
the West 



its place and carried away by a guard of old French soldiers 
while the Stars and Stripes were flung to the breeze from the 
top of the staff. The ceremony of American occupation ended 
with a speech by the new American governor to the assembled 
Louisianians, whom he called, "My fellow citizens." 

The vast domain acquired by the Louisiana purchase had 
a population of about fifty thousand in 1803, nearly all of whom 

Government lived upon the banks of the lower Mississippi and Red rivers. 

in Louisiana Congress soon gave this inhabited region a territorial form of 
govermnent, and in 1812 the state of Louisiana with its present 
boundaries was admitted into the Union. 

Outside the settlements in the present state of Louisiana 
and a few little French villages in Missouri, the old French 
province of Louisiana was an unknown wilderness. Jefferson 
had long been interested in western exploration, and after 
1803 he had an added reason for searching out the extent 
and nature of the country beyond the Mississippi. He now 
sent two young army oflScers, Meriwether Lewis, who had been 
his private secretary, and William Clark, a brother of George 
Rogers Clark, to ascend the Missouri River and, if possible, 
to cross the continent to the Pacific. It would have been hard 
to find two men better fitted for the dangerous task before them. 
Lewis and Clark were daring and resolute yet wise and tactful 
in dealing with the Indians, whose friendship they must win if 
they were to succeed in their hazardous purpose. They were 
also careful observers of the physical features, plants, and 
animals of the country through which they passed, and skilled 
in reporting plainly what they saw. 

In May, 1804, Lewis and Clark started up the Missouri 
River with forty-five men in three boats. Soon they left the 
last settlement behind them. Their journey was slow and 
filled with toil, for the current against which they strove was 
swift and the river was filled with snags. At night they were 
pestered almost beyond endurance by swarms of gnats and 
mosquitoes. They depended upon game for their food, but 
they lived well for they were traveling through a paradise for 
hunters, a land swarming with buffaloes, elk, deer, and wild 
turkeys. They had some trouble with the Indians along the 
way, but the firmness and good sense of the leaders averted 
any serious danger. The approach of cold weather found them 



Their trip 
up the 
Missouri 



OCCUPATION OF LOUISIANA 



227 



sixteen hundred miles up the Missouri in the land of the Man- 
dan Indians, near the present Bismarck, North Dakota. Here 
they built a fort and passed the winter. 

In April, 1805, Lewis and Clark again pushed forward, 
this time in small canoes, until they traced the Missouri to its 
source in the Rocky Mountains. During this part of their They reach 
journey they were much troubled by ferocious grizzly bears. *^® Pacific 
An Indian squaw called the 
Bird Woman, the wife of a 
French hunter in their 
party, was very helpful to 
Lewis and Clark at this 
stage of their work. Years 
before the Bird Woman had 
been kidnaped from a 
mountain tribe. She now 
found her kindred, who sold 
horses to the explorers and 
showed them a trail through 
the mountains. After many 
hardships the party reached 
a stream which flows into 
the Columbia. Here they 
built canoes and floated 
with the current until they 
reached the Pacific Ocean. 
After a winter in camp near 
the shore of the Pacifie 
Lewis and Clark retraced 
their course and reached 
St. Louis in safety in September, 1806. Their expedition was 
one of the most remarkable in the history of American explo- 
ration. 

While Lewis and Clark were crossing the continent another 
young army officer, Zebulon N. Pike, led two important explor- 
ing parties into the newly acquired Louisiana country. In 1805 Pike's 
he ascended the Mississippi River and spent the winter exploring explorations 
the lake region of Minnesota, though he did not find the true 
source of the Mississippi. In 1806 Pike crossed the plains of 
Kansas to the Arkansas River, which he traced to the Rocky 





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HHI 




W^ 


IB 




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HP^ 


H^^^p^ 


yH^^B 




mmY 


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WW J 


I^B|| 


^^^^ 


sjl 


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iiir -- 


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The Bird Woman 



228 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



Mountains. It was on this expedition that Pike discovered 
the mighty peak which has ever since borne his name. After 
terrible suffering from cold and hunger Pike reached the Rio 
Grande where he was captured as a trespasser upon Spanish 
territory and taken to Mexico. He was soon released, however, 
and found his way back to the United States. 

Besides the valuable knowledge they gained about the 
The impor- extent and the resources of the country bought from France 
tance of the j^ 1803, Lewis and Clark, and Pike opened the way into the 
Lewis and heart of the far West. The trails they blazed were soon fol- 
Clark lowed by hunters, trappers, and fur traders, and a little later 




The Exploring Expeditions of Lewis and Clark, and Pike 

actual settlers came to possess the land. In 1792 an American 
sea captain named Gray had found the mouth of a great ri-ver 
which he named Columbia for his ship. This discovery gave the 
United States a claim to all the country drained by the Colum- 
bia River. The work of Lewis and Clark strengthened our 
. claim to the Oregon country, as the far Northwest was coming 
to be called. When John Jacob Astor established a fur-trading 
post at Astoria in 1811 he took the first step toward the actual 
occupation of this rich region. 

The Plot of Aaron Burr. — While Lewis and Clark were 

exploring the far West the peace of the western settlements 

Aaron Burr was threatened by the wild schemes of Aaron Burr. Burr was 

a brilliant and ambitious man, but utterly selfish and untrust- 



THE PLOT OF AARON BURR 



229 



worthy. We have seen how he came within a single vote of 
winning the presidency in 1800, when Jefferson was chosen 
by the House of Representatives. In 1804 Burr tried to be 
elected governor of New York, but he was defeated through 
the efforts of Alexander Hamilton. This angered him and he 
challenged Hamilton and killed him in a duel. This crime 
ruined Burr's political prospects in the East, and he now 
turned his attention to a selfish conspiracy in the West. 

Burr's purpose was to make himself the ruler of a new 











■fMM- 



;/ f 




\ 

Aaron Burr Addressing His Followers 

state in the Southwest. Just how he expected to establish this 

new nation is not quite clear. He told some of his followers Burr's plot 

that he intended to lead an expedition against Mexico. Others 

thought that he meant to set up a government of his own in 

Louisiana. Probably he dreamed of doing both of these things. 

Burr told so many different stories about his plans that it is 

hard for us to believe anything that he said. 

At first the men of the West, who hated Spain and wished 
to win West Florida and Texas from her, received Burr with 
enthusiasm. But when they began to realize that his designs His arrest 
were treasonable they fell away from him. In 1806 Burr ^^^ *"^^ 
started down the Mississippi with sixty followers, but when 



230 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



Control of 
the Missis- 
sippi 



The area of 
our country 
doubled 



Great 
importance 
of the 
Louisiana 
Purchase 



his party reached Natchez he lost hope and, disguised as a river 
boatman, fled through the forest toward Florida. He was 
arrested just before he reached the Spanish boundary and 
tried for treason, but was acquitted because it could not be 
proved that he had ever actually levied war upon the United 
States. 

The Meaning of the Louisiana Purchase. — The purchase 
of Louisiana was welcomed with delight by the people of the 
rising West. It made the Mississippi an American river from 
its source to its mouth, and thus gave to the inhabitants of the 
Mississippi vallev a natural outlet for their commerce for all 
time. It promoted the peace of our country by removing a 
cause of dispute and possible wars with Spain or France. 
Burr's conspiracy would have been a much more serious danger 
than it was if either of those nations had been in possession of 
New Orleans at the time. 

The acquisition of the land from the Mississippi to the 
Rocky Mountains doubled the area of the United States. 
Thirteen great states have since been created out of the terri- 
tory added to the nation in 1803. We then owned all of the 
most fertile and extensive river valley in the temperate zone,^ 
a land designed by nature to be the home of one people. It 
thus made certain the future greatness of our country. When 
Napoleon sold Louisiana he said, "This accession of territory 
establishes forever the power of the United States." 

The Louisiana purchase strengthened the government of 
the United States. As a ''strict constructionist" Jefferson 
doubted the right of the nation to buy territory and wanted 
the Constitution amended so that the purchase could be law- 
fully made. But his friends persuaded him that it was not 
necessary to do this, and since the Louisiana Purchase was 
made no one has questioned the power of the national 
government to acquire territory. The acquisition of the vast 
domain beyond the Mississippi opened a great field for western 
emigration. The Mississippi valley was destined to be the 
real heart of the country in which true democracy and 
national spirit were to develop most rapidly. When we 
think of all its consequences we must decide that the purchase 
of Louisiana was the most important fact in the first half 
century of our history under the Constitution. 



REFERENCES 231 

REFERENCES. 

Channing, The Jeffcrsonian System; Ogg, The Opening of the Missis- 
sippi; McMaster, History of the People of the United States, Vols. II-III; 
Schouler, History of the United States, Vol. II; Adams, History of the 
United States, Vols. I-III ; Hosmer, Short History of the Mississippi Valley; 
Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, Vol. IV. 



TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. Jefferson and the Great Men of his Time. Adams, History of the 
United States, I, 185-19(5. 

2. The Inauguration of Jefferson. Adams, History of the United 
States, I, 197-204. 

3. The Story of Toussaint Louverture. Adams, History of the United 
States, I, 378-398. 

4. Napoleon's Quarrel with his Brothers About Selling Louisiana. 
Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, III, 367-372. 

5. How We Bought Louisiana. Channing, The Jeffersonian System, 
60-72. 

6. Raising our Flag in New Orleans. Grace King, Nexo Orleans, 
155-163. 

7. The Adventures of Lewis and Clark. McAIurry, Pioneers of the 
Rocky Mountains, 1-39. 

8. Pike's Explorations, Thwaites, Rocky Mourdain Explorations, 
196-208. 

9. The Duel between Hamilton and Burr. Lodge, Alexander Hamil- 
ton, 242-247. 

10. The Story of Burr's Conspiracy. Channing, The Jeffersonian 
System, 155-168. 



ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Proctor, Sa-Ca-Ga-We-A; Barlow, On the Discoveries of 
Captain Lewis. 

Stories: Churchill, The Crossing; Carpenter, The Code of Victor 
Jaillot; Cable, Strange True Stories of Louisiana; The Grandissimes; 
Hale, Philip Nolan's Friends; The Man without a Country; Hough, The 
Magnificent Adventure; Pidgin, Blennerhassett ; Irving, Astoria; Mc- 
Murry, Pioneers of the Rocky Mountains; Thwaites, Rocky Mountain 
Exploration. 

Biographies: Morse, Thomas Jefferson; Schouler, Thomas Jefferson; 
Lighten, Lewis and Clark, 



232 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Why was the election of Jefferson a turning point in our history? 

2. Explain how our present way of electing a president differs from 
the plan followed in 1800. Is there any good reason for our system of 
presidential electors? 

3. Name the first five presidents. How many terms had each? 

4. Was Jefferson's policy of reducing the army and navy wise? What 
is meant by calling Jefferson a "servant of the common good"? 

5. Why did we want to buy New Orleans? Why was Napoleon willing 
to sell Louisiana to us? How do the farmers of the Mississippi valley send 
their products to the markets of the world now? 

6. Where is Santo Domingo? Point out upon a map the exact 
extent of the Louisiana purchase. Trace upon the map the route of Lewis 
and Clark. The route of Pike's expeditions. 

7. What is treason? Was Burr a traitor? 

8. Theme for an essay: The Importance of the Louisiana Purchase. • 



CHAPTER XII 



The United States and Europe 



England and France Trample upon Our Rights on the Sea. — 
War was resumed between France and England in 1803. The 
next year Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed emperor of English sea 
the French. The new emperor had always dreamed of con- po^er 
quest and he was 
already planning to 
invade England. 
"Masters of the 
channel for six 
hours," he said, 
"and we are mas- 
ters of the world." 
But Napoleon's 
plans for the in- 
vasion of England 
had to be given up 
after Lord Nelson, 
the most famous of 
English sailors, de- 
stroyed the naval 
power of France at 
the battle of Trafal- 
gar in 1805. Nel- 
son fell at the 
moment of victory, 
but his words at 
Trafalgar, "Eng- 
land expects every man to do his duty," will live as long as 
the British Empire endures. 

While the English and the French were fighting at sea 
Austria, Russia, and later Prussia declared war on the French 
emperor. Napoleon promptly struck these countries a series The victories 
of smashing blows. In December, 1805, he defeated the com- °^ Napoleon 

233 




Lord Nelson 



234 



UNITED STATES AND EUROPE 



Commercial 
warfare 
between 
France and 
England 



Our trade 
sxxffers 



Our pros- 
perity in 
danger 



bined armies of Austria and Russia at Austerlitz and forced 
Austria to sign a himiiliating treaty of peace. The next year 
with equal swiftness he overwhehned the Prussians and overran 
their country. In 1807 Napoleon defeated the Russians and 
compelled Prussia and Russia to make peace with him upon his 
own terms. Nearly all Europe was now in his power or under 
his influence. 

England and France were still at war, but for a time it 
was a war in which there was little chance of actual fighting. 
England's control of the sea insured her against invasion, but 
on the other hand her army could not attack Napoleon any- 
where with hope of true success. Under these circumstances 
each nation sought to conquer the other by ruining its trade 
and starving its people into submission. Ever since the war 
began, England had been trying to prevent American ships 
from carrying the sugar of the French colonies in the West 
Indies to the markets of Europe. She now declared a blockade 
of all the coast of Europe in the hands of the French. This 
meant that the ships of the British navy would try to capture 
any neutral vessels going to ports under French control. In 
reply Napoleon forbade all commerce with England and said 
that any ship that obeyed the English orders could be taken 
by the French. Practically, all this meant that no American 
ship could safely engage in European trade. If she escaped 
the English on the sea she was in danger of seizure by the 
French in the ports of the continent. It is little wonder that 
President Jefferson declared that England was "a den of pirates, 
and France a den of thieves," or that a member of Congress 
compared these two countries "to a tiger and a shark, each 
destroying everything that came in their way." 

These restrictions upon neutral trade were a very serious 
matter to our people. Since the revolutionary and Napoleonic 
wars began in Europe in 1792, we had developed an immense 
foreign commerce. There was a great demand for our wheat, 
rice, beef, and pork in the countries at war, and our shipments 
of cotton were growing with amazing rapidity. Our swift 
sailing vessels not only carried our own exports but engaged in 
the rich traffic with the West Indies, South America, and the 
Far East. Oin- farmers were selling their products for high 
prices, our shipyards were busy, our sailors were employed at 



OUR RIGHTS ON THE SEA 235 

high wages, and our shipowners were making huge profits. 
The country was never more prosperous than from 1795 to 
1805. But in Jefferson's second term the efforts of England 
and France to ruin each other threatened to destroy the pros- 
perity of the United States. Our people were justly angry 
with both France and England, but they were especially wrathful 
toward England because of her greater power to harm us on 
the sea. 

In addition to her outrages upon our trade, England claimed 
the right to search our ships for British-born sailors, and, if 
she found them, to for'cc them to serve in her navy. This was Our saUors 
called impressment. It was lawful in British ports and on impressed 
British merchant vessels, and the British attempted to justify 
the impressment of sailors on American ships on the ground 
that they were British subjects who had deserted from British 
ships. There was a measure of truth in this claim, for many 
British sailors did seek emplo\Tnent in the American merchant 
marine at this time on account of the better treatment and 
higher wages they received in it. If such sailors claimed to be 
naturalized American citizens it availed them nothing, for the 
British government denied their right to become naturalized 
in another country and declared that if they were once English- 
men they were always Englishmen. As a matter of fact, many 
nativ('-l)orn Americans were also impressed and forced to serve 
in the British navy. This impressment of American sailors 
was an outrage which would not have been borne if our coun- 
try had then had a government strong enough to protect its 
own citizens. 

The impressment of sailors from our merchant ships was 
bad enough, but worse followed. In 1807 the British warship 
Leopard stopped the Chesapeake of our navy off the Virginia The Leopard 
coast and demanded the right to search her for British deserters. ^^^ *^^^ , 
When the captain of the Chesapeake refused to permit the search 
the Leopard fired upon the American ship killing three and 
wounding eighteen of her crew. As the Chesapeake was not 
ready for battle she was compelled to surrender. The British 
then searched her and carried off four of her crew. They 
were all deserters from the British service, but three of them 
were native Americans who had been impressed. The news 
of this affair greatly angered the people. "Never," said Jeffer- 



236 



UNITED STATES AND EUROPE 



Jefferson's 

embargo 

policy 



son, "since the battle of Lexington, have I seen the country 
in such a state of exasperation as at present." The attack 
upon the Chesapeake was an act of war, and unless followed 
by a prompt apology from England it ought to have been 
answered by a declaration of war against that country. 

Our Government Fails to Maintain Our Rights by Peaceful 
Means. — The conduct of England in seizing ships and impress- 
ing our sailors soon led many Americans to clamor for war in 
defense of our rights. But President Jefferson and his secretary 
of state, James Madison, who became president in 1809, both 
thought war an unwise policy for the United States, and tried 
to maintain our rights on the sea by peaceful means. At 
Jefferson's suggestion Congress promptly passed the Embargo 
Act in December, 1807. This law said that oui vessels must not 
sail to any foreign port and that foreign ships must not take 
cargoes away from our ports. Of course the embargo saved 
our ships, for they could not be captured if they remained at 
our own wharves. But Jefferson believed that it would also 
force England and France to respect our commerce. He thought 
that those countries must have our food products and our cotton 
and that they would soon agree to treat us fairly in order to 
get them. 

The effect of the embargo was not what Jefferson expected. 
Our minister at Paris wrote that "it is not felt here and in 
England it is forgotten." In fact, English shipowners a3tually 
e embargo g^jj^gj j^y [^ fQj. j^ threw more of the world's trade into their 
hands. On the other hand, the embargo worked great injury 
to our own people. It angered our merchants and shipowners, 
who had been making enormous profits in spite of their loss of 
ships. You can imagine their feelings when they looked at 
their idle vessels and at the great stores of flour, bacon, and 
salt fish which they could not sell. Many of them evaded the 
hated law at every opportunity. The loss and suffering was 
even greater among the other classes of our people. The ship- 
yards were deserted, great numbers of sailors were out of work, 
and in less than a year the farmers, who had long enjoyed a 
ready market and good prices, found that they could not sell 
their grain at any price. 

By February, 1809, the discontent of the people became so 
great that Congress repealed the Embargo Act and passed in 



Failure of 



"WAR HAWKS" HAVE THEIR WAY 237 

its place the Non-Intercourse Act. • This law forbade trade The Non- 
with England and France but permitted it with all other Intercourse 
nations. A few days after the Non-Intercourse Act was passed n(7better ^ 
Madison became president. In his inaugural address he said 
that he should follow the same peaceful policy which Jefferson 
had pursued. Madison tried in vain to get England to agree 
to a treaty recognizing our rights upon the sea. The non- 
intercourse policy proved as useless as the embargo in bringing 
England and France to respect our commerce. It was aban- 
doned in 1810. 

Congress next tried another plan. It permitted trade with 
both England and France but declared that if either one of 
these nations would stop seizing American ships we would All peaceful 
cease trading with the other. This was really an attempt to means fail to 
get England and France to bid against each other for our prod- rights 
ucts. Napoleon took advantage of this law to secure American 
provisions which he needed. He told our minister that he would 
recall the decrees which interfered with our trade. President 
Madison took him at his word and once more we stopped trading 
with England. A little later Napoleon seized every American 
ship in the French ports and by this bit of trickery stole 
.$10,000,000 worth of American goods. In the meantime Eng- 
land continued, wherever possible, to capture our ships going to 
France. It was evident that the efforts to protect our rights 
on the sea by peaceful means were utter failures. 

The "War Hawks" Have Their Way.— The United States 
had good reasons for war with both England and France at 
any time between 1807 and 1812. Over nine hundred Ameri- Good 
can ships had been taken by the British, and more than five reasons for 
hundred and fifty had fallen into the hands of the French. ^^^ 
Six thousand American citizens had been forced to serve in 
the British navy. Both nations had treated our remonstrances 
with haughty disdain. But a nation with a democratic govern- 
ment does not declare war until public opinion approves such 
1 a course, and in 1807 the majority of our people agreed with 
Jefferson in sincerely desiring peace. By 1812 this feeling had 
greatly changed. 

The chief reason for the rising war spirit during the years 
; just before 1812 was the news of the repeated outrages upon ^^^ rfsine 
our ships and our sailors. Then, too, the hard times which war spirit 



238 



UNITED STATES AND EUROPE 



the country experienced after the passage of the Embargo Act 
led the people to blame England for their vanishing prosperity. 
The growing desire for war was strongest in the South and 
the West. The merchants and shipowners of New England, 
most of whom were Federalists, steadfastly opposed war because 
they knew it would ruin what commerce they had left. But 
in the other sections of the country there was a growing number 
of young Republicans who resented the insults to our national 
honor and were eager for war. The leaders who still clung^ 




Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, Leaders of the "War Hawks" 



to a peace poncy called these ardent young men "war hawks." 
By 1810 the people were ready to follow the "war hawks," 
and in the election of that year enough of them were chosen 
to Congress to control that body. 

Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South 
Carolina were the chief leaders of the "war hawks." Each of 
Leaders of these men was destined to play a great part in our history for 
the next forty years. Clay was a brilliant orator and Calhoun 
a convincing debater. Clay was a man of winning manners 
and always had a host of friends. He aroused the war spirit 
in Congress with words of fire. When asked, "What are we to 
gain by war?" he replied with ringing voice, "What are we 



the "war 
hawks 



'WAR HAWKS" HAVE THEIR WAY 



230 



not to lose by peace? Commerce, character, and a nation's best 
treasm-e, honor!" 

Just as the first session of Congress in which the "war 
hawks" sat had met in December, . 1811, news came which 
still further exasperated the people against England. The Indian war in 
Indians of the West, under the k^adership of a great chief named *^® West 
Tecumseh, were plotting an attack upon the settlers. Before 
they were ready to strike they were defeated by General 




The Battle of Tippecanoe 

William Henry Harrison at the battle of Tippecanoe in Indiana. 
The real cause of the discontent among the Indians was the 
occupation of their hunting grounds by the settlers, but the 
people believed that the red men were incited against them 
by the British, and knew that they were supplied with guns and 
powder by British traders. 

By 1812 the peace-loving Madison was ready to join the 
war party. All his plans for safeguarding American rights 
without fighting for them had failed. Moreover, he wanted War 
to be reelected president in 1812, and he knew that his party jfjl*'^®^ ^° 
would not support him if he clung to his peace policy. On 
June 1, 1812, the president sent a message to Congress in 
which he summed up our grievances against the British and 






240 



UNITED STATES AND EUROPE 



suggested war. Some days later by a vote of almost two to 
one Congress declared war against Great Britain. 

In 1812 the British were devoting every energy to the 

gigantic task of beating Napoleon. They did not want war 

The war was with the United States. In their desire for peace they apolo- 

a misfortune gized for the attack upon the Chesapeake and returned to that 

vessel the three Americans they had taken from it; and only 

two days before our 
declaration of war the 
British ministers said they 
would stop seizing our 
ships. If there had been an 
ocean cable in those days 
our second war with Eng- 
land might possibly have 
been averted. It is a great 
misfortune that it ever 
came. In fighting Napo- 
leon, as in fighting the 
Germans in the great war 
which began in 1914, Eng- 
land was defending freedom 
against one of its most 
dangerous foes. If our 
people had seen this fact 
clearly in 1812 they might 
have joined Great Britain 
against Napoleon. But the 
British can blame only 
themselves for the fact that 
we did not see it. Their 
government, which was not yet democratic in any true sense, 
had long treated us in the most haughty and overbearing 
way. For years we had borne in peace outrages upon our 
citizens and our commerce, committed almost in sight of our 
shores, that England would not have tolerated for a single 
hour. The War of 1812 was really a second War for Inde- 
pendence. 

Our Efforts to Invade Canada. — When the "war hawks" 
clamored for war against England in 1812 they intended to 




The Surrender of Detroit 



EFFORTS TO INVADE CANADA 



241 



invade and conquer Canada. Henry Clay boasted that the ^g -j^j^ 
mihtia of Kentucky alone could overrun Upper Canada and to invade 
take Montreal, and declared that the United States would Canada 
dictate terms of peace in Quebec and Halifax. At first thought 
the conditions seemed to favor the success of this proposed 
attack upon Canada. The years 1812 and 1813 were years 
of war in Europe. England was intent upon defeating Napoleon 
and was pouring all her resources into the great war against 




The Canadian Border in the War of 1812 

him. She could spare few troops for the defense of her posses- 
sions in America. 

If you look at the map you will see that there were three 
places on the Canadian frontier of 1812 at which it would be 
natural for invading American armies to cross the border. The 
There was the route by Lake Champlain, over which armed Canadian 
men had sailed and marched so often in the French and Indian "^^^^^^ 
War and the Revolution. Farther west lay the Niagara frontier. 
The men of our western settlements would find it most conven- 
ient to strike at Canada by way of Detroit. All the land fighting 
during the first two years of the war was in these three regions. 

In 1812 nothing was accomplished on the direct road to 
Canada by Lake Champlain. An American force which 
crossed the Niagara River into Canada was defeated with the American 
loss of a thousand men at Queenstown. On the Detroit frontier failures 
16 



242 



UNITED STATES AND EUROPE 



Perry on 
Lake Erie 



the attempt to invade Canada in 1812 ended in a still greater 
disaster, for General Hull surrendered Detroit and his entire 
army to the British without striking a blow. The British 
and their Indian alhes were now in possession of the whole of 
Michigan Territory. In 1813 little worth mentioning was 
done near Lake Champlain or at Niagara. 

In the meantime Captain Oliver Hazard Perry, a young 
officer of the navy, was building a fleet at Erie. This was no 

easy task. The timber for 
the ships had to be cut in the 
forest, and the ropes, sails, 
guns, and ammunition were 
brought with great difficulty 
from Philadelphia. At last 
the ships were launched, and 
on September 10, 1813, 
Perry met the British fleet 
in a fiercely contested battle 
near the western end of 
Lake Erie. When the Law- 
rence, Perry's flagship, was 
disabled, he abandoned it 
and was rowed in an open 
boat to the Niagara, with 
which he continued the fight 
until the English ships were 
all taken. ''We have met 
the enemy and they are 
ours," was the famous mes- 
sage in which Perry reported 
his victory to General 
Harrison, the commander of the western army. 

Perry's control of Lake Erie enabled Harrison to retake 
Detroit. He then pursued the British and Indians into western 
We recover Canada and defeated them at the battle of the Thames. Thus 
our losses pg^-^y ^^^ Harrison recovered in 1813 what Hull had lost in 
1812. Early in 1814 General Jacob Brown led an army across 
the Niagara River and fought gallantly at Chippewa and 
Lundy's Lane, but he was unable to win any Canadian terri- 
tory. All our efforts to conquer Canada ended in failure. 




Perry Leaving the Lawrence for the Niagara 



THE NAVY IN THE WAR OF 1812 



243 



The reasons for our failure to carry out the plans with 
which we began the War of 1812 are plain. The president 
was timid and lacking in energy, and most of the members The folly of 
of his cabinet were unfit for their places in time of war. The unprepared- 
treasury was empty and the people were unwilling to pay higher 
taxes. It was difficult to borrow money because many of the 
vich men were opposed to the war and would not lend to the 
government. There were no good roads by which supplies 




The Death of Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames 



From an old print. 



could be taken to the distant frontiers where they were needed. 
Our small armies were without trained officers and were led 
at first by incompetent generals, who were appointed on 
account of political influence rather than fitness to command. 
The untrained militia proved almost worthless on the field of 
battle. It would be hard to find a better example of the folly 
of national unpreparedness than that furnished by our experi- 
ence in the War of 1812. 

The Navy in the War of 1812. — The shame and humiliation q^j. g^nant 
of the defeats of our untrained and poorly led armies in 1812 little navy 




244 



UNITED STATES AND EUROPE 



and 1813 were lightened by the splendid victories of our gallant 
little navy. Not much was expected of the navy for we had 
only sixteen vessels of all sizes, while the British navy contained 
more than a thousand ships. But the fighting spirit of John 
Paul Jones still lived in our captains and our sailors, many of 
whom had received an invaluable training in a successful war 




The Death of Lawrence 
"Don't give up the ship!" 

which they waged between 1801 and 1805 against the Barbary 
pirates on the northern coast of Africa. 

Not long after war was declared, the American frigate 
Constitution, Captain Isaac Hull, met the British ship Guer- 
Our victories riere off the coast of Nova Scotia. In half an hour after the 
on the sea Constitution began to fight, the Guerriere with all its masts 
shot away lay a helpless wreck upon the sea and was forced 
to surrender. The report of this victory was quickly followed 
by the thrilling news that the Wasp had taken the Frolic; the 
United States, the Macedonian; the Hornet, the Peacock; and 



THE NAVY IN THE WAR OF 1812 245 

that the Constitution, now beginning to be called "Old Iron- 
sides," had captured the Java. The victorious captains, Hull, 
Decatur, Bainbridge, and Lawrence, were the heroes of the 
hour. The British were correspondingly depressed. They 
had been so long supreme upon the sea that they did not know 
what to make of defeat. The reason for the American victories 
in these ship duels was plain. The British fought with bull- 
dog courage, as they always do. The Americans were equally 
brave, had better ships, and showed superior seamanship and 
more accurate gunnery. 

But we did not always win. In 1813 Captain Lawrence 
in the Chesapeake fought the Shannon off the coast of Massa- 
chusetts before his crew was properly trained, and lost his life "Don't give 
and his ship. Wlien Lawrence was carried below, mortally "P *^® ship" 
wounded, he shouted to his men, "Don't give up the ship!" 
"Keep the guns going!" "Fight her till she sinks!" "Don't 
give up the ship!" became an inspiring war cry in our navy. 
A few months later Perry carried these words upon his flag 
when he captured the British fleet on Lake Erie. 

Very soon after the war was declared, American privateers 
began to prey upon British commerce. A privateer is a ship 
owned and armed by private citizens and commissioned by Privateers 
the government to capture the ships of the enemy. Such 
commissions are called letters of marque and reprisal. As the 
captured ships and cargoes become the property of their captors, 
privateering, though full of risk, was very often profitable. 
The privateer Perry, for example, took twenty-two British 
merchant vessels in three months. The Surprise captured 
twenty-one in a cruise of thirty days. Enormous damage was 
inflicted upon British commerce in this way. Privateering is 
really a kind of legalized piracy and has long been abandoned 
by civilized nations. The United States has not resorted to 
the practice since the War of 1812. 

In spite of the fine fighting record of our navy in the 
War of 1812, we must not think that we won the control of 
the sea from Great Britain. England had scores of battleships, English sea 
any one of which was more than a match for our smaller power 
vessels. One by one our ships were captured or blockaded in ""™P 
our own ports. The Essex, Captain Porter, was taken by two 
British ships off the coast of Chili, after a long cruise in the 



246 



UNITED STATES AND EUROPE 



Pacific in which she did great damage to British shipping 

Before the close of the war it was almost impossible for one 

of om' ships to put out to sea. 

The British Attempts to Invade the United States. — Early 

in 1814 Napoleon was defeated and forced to give up his throne. 
The fall of For the first time since 1803 there was peace in Europe. This 
Napoleon ^^^^ changed the whole character of the War of 1812. England 




Commodore MacDonough's Victory on Lake Champlain 



could now send scores of ships and thousands of veteran troops 
to America. Instead of trying to invade Canada, we now had 
our hands full in resisting the British attempts to invade our 
own country. 

In the summer of 1814 a British army of eleven thousand 
men started to invade New York along the route followed by 
Mac- Burgoyne in 1777. The success of this movement depended 

Donough's upon the control of Lake Champlain. When the British fleet 
piattsburg ^^ *^^*' ^^^^ reached Plattsburg Bay, it was met by the 
Bay American squadron under Commodore Thomas MacDonough. 



BRITISH INVADE UNITED STATES 



247 



The British 

capture 

Washington 



The British had the stronger force in ships and guns, but in 
spite of the odds against hini, MacDonough's skill and indomi- 
table pluck won the day. Every British ship struck its flag 
and 'the British army at once fled to Canada. The fight in 
Plattsburg Bay was the greatest naval battle of the war, and 
MacDonough is entitled to the first place among the many 
gallant sailors of the War of 1812. 

The entire eastern coast of the United States was blockaded 
during the summer of 
1814, and in August a 
British fleet and army 
entered Chesapeake Bay. 
Landing below Washing- 
ton the British marched 
toward the capital. The 
raw militia who had been 
called out to defend it 
ran at the first fire. The 
president and the other 
officers of the government 
fled in haste. The British 
entered the city, burned 
the Capitol, the White 
House, and the other 
public buildings, and then 
withdrew to then- ships. 
Their fleet then moved up 
the bay toward Baltimore. 
After the British general 
was killed in an unsuccessful attack upon that city the enemy 
withdrew from the Chesapeake. It was the sight of our flag 
still flying over Fort McHemy after the attack upon Balti- 
more which inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star- 
Spangled Banner." 

In December, 1814, a great fleet carrying ten thousand 
British veterans appeared at the mouth of the Mississippi. 
General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, who had recently shown Jackson at 
his skill and energy as a fighter by inflicting a crushing defeat New Orleans 
upon the powerful Creek Indians in Alabama, hurried to the 
defense of New Orleans. Jackson built a very strong line of 




The British Campaign against Washington and 
Baltimore 



248 



UNITED STATES AND EUROPE 



The Treaty 
of Ghent 




breastworks l^elow the city. On January 8, 1815, the British 
tried to storm these works, but the withering fire from the long 
rifles of the western frontiersmen mowed them down like grass. 
General Pakenham, the British commander, was killed, and 
nearly two thousand of his men lay dead or wounded in front 
of the American lines. Jackson's loss in this assault was only 
thirteen men. The battle of New Orleans ended the fighting 
in the War of 1812 and made Andrew Jackson its greatest 
hero. The attempts of the British to invade the United States 
in 1814 were no more successful than the efforts of the Ameri- 
cans to overrun Canada 
had been in 1812 and 
1813. 

The Results of the 
War of 1812.— After the 
return of peace in Europe 
in the spring of 1814 
neither Great Britain nor 
the United States had 
any good reason for pro- 
longing the war between 
them. Negotiations for 
peace began in the sum- 
mer of that year, but as 
neither side was willing to 
yield all that the other 
wanted, it was not until December 24, 1814, that a treaty 
of peace was signed at Ghent in Belgium. There was not a 
word in this treaty about the issues which caused the war. 
Each nation was left just as it was in 1812. At first thought it 
seemed that the thirty thousand lives and the two hundred 
million dollars which the War of 1812 cost the American 
people had been thrown away. 

But as a matter of fact the War of 1812 had a very great 

effect upon our people. It taught them to think and feel and 

Our sense act like a nation. It showed them, through a bitter experience, 

of nationality ^j^^^ g^ nation ought to provide for its own defense. Never since 

s imu a e ^^^^ ^^^ ^j^^ United States been so unprepared to maintain 

the rights of its citizens as it was then. The skill and the valor 

of our navy in this war won respect abroad and gave our coun- 



Jackson's Campaign in the South 



RESULTS OF THE WAR OF 1812 



249 



try a better standing than ever before among the nations of 
the world. Henceforth our sailors and our commerce enjoyed 
the freedom of the sea. 

The War of 1812 had a far-reaching influence upon the 
politics and the industries of our country. The Federalists 
of New England opposed the war, and this attitude made their Political and 
party so unpopular that it ceased to exist after the election of industrial 
1816. The Repulilican party turned from timid leaders like ^®^" ^ 
Jefferson and Madison and began to follow bold and aggressive 
men like Clay and Calhoun. As the embargo, the non-inter- 
course law, and the 
war cut off the 
supply of European 
goods, our people 
began to make 
more things for 
themselves. In this 
way the war won- 
derfully stimulated 
American manufac- 
turing. Wlien the 
charter of Hamil- 
ton's bank expired 
in 1811 the Repub- 
licans refused to re- 
charter it. But five 
y e a r s' experience 

with the poor paper money of state banks brought them to 
establish a second United States Bank in 1816. Finally, the 
sad lack of good roads during the war led to a great demand 
for turnpikes and canals. 

The War of 1812 marks the end of an era in our national 
life. For twenty-five years the French Revolution and the 
great Napoleonic wars which grew out of it had colored all our The end of 
history. Our thoughts and our interests were largely deter- ^^ ^^^ 
mined by events across the sea. But after 1815 we turned our 
backs upon Europe and faced westward. The next generations 
were chiefiy concerned with the problems of their own govern- 
ment and with the development pf the marvelous resources of 
their own country. 




The House in Ghent Where the Treaty Was Signed Which 
Ended the War of 1812 



250 



UNITED STATES AND EUROPE 



The Settlement of Our Boundaries.— The War of 1812 
left us with some questions yet to be settled with our neighbors, 
Boundary England and Spain. The northern and western boundaries 
^sre^ents Qf ^]^g Louisiana purchase had never been definitely determined. 
In 1818 we agreed with England that the northern boundary 
of the United States from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky 
Mountains should be fixed at forty-nine degrees north latitude. 
But we also claimed that the country beyond the Rocky 




Florida 
acquired 



An Interview between General Jackson and Weatherford, a Chief of the Creek Indians 

Mountains which Lewis and Clark had explored belonged to 
us. England disputed this claim and said that the Oregon 
country was her territory. By the Oregon country both 
nations meant the present states of Oregon, Washington, and 
Idaho, and the Canadian province of British Columbia. By 
the treaty of 1818 England and the LTnited States agreed to 
the joint occupation of Oregon. Joint occupation meant that 
for the present this rich region on the Pacific Coast should be 
free and open to traders and settlers from both nations. 

For some time our people had been coming to believe 
that the Gulf of Mexico was their natural boundary on the 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 251 

south. We gained our first foothold on the Gulf coast when we 
bought Louisiana. We claimed that Louisiana extended east- 
ward along the coast as far as the Perdido River. With good 
reason Spain denied this claim, but between 1810 and 1813 
the United States occupied West Florida by force and thus 
came into possession of the fine harbor of Mobile. The present 
state of Florida still belonged to Spain, but after the War of 
1812 the people of our southern states complained loudly that 
its swamps were a refuge for pirates, robbers, runaway slaves 
and hostile Indians. Early in 1818 General Jackson pursued 
an Indian war party into Florida, captured the Spanish fort 
at Pensacola, and put to death two British subjects whom he 
accused of inciting the Indians to murder the settlers across 
the border. Spain was now given to understand that she must 
protect our citizens against marauders from Florida or cede 
that province to the United States. As she could not do the 
former she sold Florida to the United States in 1819 for five 
million dollars. 

The western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase had been 
in dispute ever since 1803. We claimed that Louisiana included 
the vast territory of Texas, but this Spain would never admit. Our Mexican 
In the treaty by which we acquired Florida in 1819 we gave up j^a^'*?^^ 
our claim to Texas and agreed to a western boundary which 
ran in an irregular line from the mouth of the Sabine River to 
forty-two degrees north latitude and thence along that parallel 
to the Pacific. When Mexico won its independence from 
Spain in 1821 this boundary line became our Mexican border. 

The Monroe Doctrine. — Spain had possessed a vast 
empire in America ever since the sixteenth century. The 
Spanish colonial rule was grasping and tyrannical, and the people Fall of the 
of Latin America were oppressed by heavy taxes and restric- Spanish 
tions on their trade. During the Napoleonic wars in Europe America 
the Spanish colonies on the mainland of America, following the 
example of the English colonies in 1775, rebelled against their 
mother country. San Martin and Simon Bolivar were the 
heroes of this struggle for freedom. By 1820 Mexico and the 
Spanish countries in South America had virtually won their 
independence though Spain still refused to acknowledge it. 

Shortly after the final downfall of Napoleon at Waterloo ^j^^ jj^j 
in 1815, the rulers of Prussia, Russia, and Austria signed an Alliance 



252 UNITED STATES AND EUROPE 

agreement to help each other to govern their respective peoples 
in accordance with "the precepts of justice, charity, and 
peace," Nearly all the countries on the continent of Europe 
came into this union, which was called the Holy Alliance. The 
real purpose of the Holy Alliance was to prevent the growth of 
democratic ideas and to crush every attempt of the peoples 
of Europe to win the right to govern themselves. When 
Spain rose in rebellion against an oppressive king in 1820 the 
Holy Alliance suppressed the revolt and restored the tyrant 
to his throne. Spain now appealed to the Holy Alliance to 
help her get back her colonies in the New World. 

The Holy Alliance was disposed to grant this request, but 
England and the United States were strongly opposed to such 
Our interests action. England was developing a rich commerce with the 
threatened Latin American countries and she did not want to see this 
trade go back to Spain. The United States shared in this 
growing trade, and our people warmly sympathized with the 
young republics to the south. Morever, we feared that if 
Europe began to interfere with the affau's of America, there 
was no telling where such interference would stop. Russia 
already threatened the Pacific Coast. There were rumots that 
she meant to get California and that other European nations 
might seize territory in America. 

England suggested that we join her in telling the Holy 
Alliance to keep its hands off the new Latin American states. 
The Monroe But President Monroe and his secretary of state, John Quincy 
Doctrine Adams, preferred to act alone. In his message of December 
2, 1823, Monroe declared that the American continents were 
no longer open to colonization by European powers. This was 
a notice to Russia to keep away from our Pacific Coast. It was 
heeded by that country, which soon agreed not to settle south 
of fifty-four degrees forty minutes, the southern limit of 
Alaska. With the Holy Alliance in mind, Monroe further 
declared that any attempt by European powers to oppose or 
to control the destiny of the Latin American states would be 
considered an unfriendly act by the United States. Europe 
was warned that it must not try to extend its political system 
to any part of North or South America. The warning was 
effectual, and the Holy Alliance made no effort to recover for 
Spain her former colonies in America. 



REFERENCES 253 

Washington and Jefferson had advised their countrymen 
to steer clear of all entangling alliances with Europe. Monroe 
went one step farther, and warned the nations of Europe not America for 
to interfere in the affairs of the western hemisphere. Hence- Americans 
forth America was to be for Americans. The Monroe Doctrine 
was accepted as the settled policy of the United States. For 
nearly a century it has guarded the New World against the 
control of its affairs by the powers of Europe. 

REFERENCES. 

Channing, The Jeffersonian System; Babcock, The Rise of American 
Nalionality; Turner, Rise of the New West; Jiart, Formation of the Union; 
Walker, The Making of the Nation; Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812; 
Histories of the United States by Adams, McMaster, Schouler, Wilson, 
and Channing. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Danger to Neutral Commerce. Channing, The Jeffersonian 
System, 195-208. 

2. The Effect of the Embargo. McMaster, History of the People of 
the United States, III, 289-294. 

3. The Affair of the Leopard and the Chesapeake. Channing, The 
Jeffersonian System, 182-194. 

4. The Story of Tecumseh. McMaster, History of the People of the 
United States, III, 529-536. 

5. The Constitution and the Guerriere. Roosevelt, The Naval War 
of 1812, 88-97. 

6. The Chesapeake and the Shannon. Roosevelt, The Naval War of 
1812, 178-187. 

7. Perry's Victory on Lake Erie. Roosevelt, The Naval War of 
1812, 262-271. 

8. The Last Fight of the Essex. Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812, 
291-300. 

9. MacDonough at Lake Champlain. Brady, American Fights and 
Fighters, 258-271. 

10. How Jackson Fought the Creeks. McMaster, History of the 
American People,^ IN, 159-172. 

11. The Battle of New Orleans. Brady, American Fights and Fighters, 
287-303; or Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812, 458-493. 

12. The Results of the War of 1812. Babcocl;, The Rise of American 
Nalionality, 187-201. 

13. The Monroe Doctrine. Turner, Rise of the New West, 199-223. 



254 UNITED STATES AND EUROPE 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Holmes, Old Ironsides; Key, The Stnr-Spangled Banner; 
Scollard, The Battle of Plattsburg Bay; Thomas Dunn English, The Bailie 
of New Orleans. 

Stories: Brady, Reuben James; Stephen Decatur; Sea well. Mid- 
shipman Paulding; Little Jarvis; Decatur and Somers; Pyle, Within the 
Capes; Read, By the Eternal; Altsheler, Herald of the West; Barnes, 
Yankee Ships and Yankee Sailors; The Hero of Erie; Atherton, Rezanor; 
Aimard, Queen of the Savannah; White, El Supremo. 

Biographies: Seawell, Twelve Great Naval Captains; Schouler, 
Thomas Jefferson; Gay, James Madison; Stevens, Albert Gallatin; Gil- 
man, James Monroe; Schiirz, Henry Clay; Sumner, Andrew Jackson. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. In what ways were our complaints against England before the 
War of 1812 similar to our grievances against Germany before our war 
with her in 1917? In what ways were they unlike? 

2. What effect does a war in Europe have upon the price of American 
farm products? Why? Was this true during the great war which began 
in 1914? 

3. Did England have a legal right to impress native-born Britons 
who were naturalized Americans? Try to find out if she claims such a 
right now. 

4. In your opinion, was the Embargo Act a wise law? \Vhy? 

5. What is meant by "public opinion"? How is it made or changed? 

6. Draw a map of the Canadian frontier illustrathig the war on that 
border. Locate Erie, Queenstown, the Thames, Lundy's I^ane, Fort 
McHenr}', Plattsburg, the Lake of the Woods, the Sabine River. 

7. What is meant by "preparedness"? What does the history of the 
War of 1812 teach us about it? What ought to be our permanent policy in 
regard to it? 

8. Did England or the United States have the better claim to the 
Oregon country? Why? 

9. Has the Monroe Doctrine been a wise policy? What changes 
have come in its interpretation? Ought we still to uphold it? 

10. What are the two most important dates in this chapter? Why do 
you think so? 

11. Question for debate: Resolved, that instead of making war on 
England in 1812 we ought to have joined the English in fighting Napoleon. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Life in the Early Republic 

Then and Now. — There is a striking contrast between our 
mode of life and that of our ancestors a century ago. We would 
think it a real hardship to give up our comfortable houses A striking 
heated by steam, hot air, or hot water, and lighted by gas or contrast 
electricity, and go back to the open fireplaces and tallow candles 
of those days. One hundred years ago a bathroom was an 
almost unknown luxury, and even in the city the water supply 
of the family was carried in buckets from the town pump. 
Few houses are now so poor that their floors are not covered 
with carpets or rugs. In the early years of the repubhc such 
floor coverings were found only in the homes of the rich. 

"The floors were strewn with rushes, 
Bare walls let in the cold, 
Oh, how they must have suffered 
In those good old days of old." 

About one-half of our people now live in cities and towns. 
Wlien the first United States census was taken m 1790, nineteen 
out of every twenty Americans lived in the country. But life Old-time 
on the farm in the "good old times" was very different from farm life 
the rural life of today. When Washington was president there 
was not a grain drill nor a reaper nor a threshing machine in 
all the land. Grain was still sown by hand, cut with a sickle, 
and threshed with a flail, very much as it had been ever since 
the days of ancient Egypt. No one had yet even dreamed of 
the mowing machine, the hay loader, or the horse fork. Practi- 
cally all the implements and the machines which now save 
labor on the farms of our country have been invented within 
the last hundred years. 

Wlien judged by our standards, life in the towns and cities 
a century ago was quite as backward as in the country. The 
streets were unpaved and badly lighted at night. Street cars City life a 
and omnibuses were unknown. No city building had an century ago 

255 



256 



LIFE IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 



Changes in 
ways of 
travel 



elevator in it, and such business conveniences as typewriters 
and telephones were still far in the future. There were no 
factories in the sense in which we use the word, and most 
manufactured articles were still made in the homes of the people 
much as they had been for thousands of years. 

Perhaps the greatest contrast between our ways of living 
and those of our ancestors a few generations ago is seen when 
we compare our methods of travel with theirs. When the 
nineteenth century dawned the American people were still 
living in the days of the stage coach and the wayside tavern. 




Washington in 1800 



From an old print. 



A wonderful 
century 



It then took about as many days as it now takes hours to go 
from Boston to New York or from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. 
Our hmited express trains, our millions of automobiles, and the 
palatial hotels in all our large cities would have seemed strange 
indeed to the men who made the Constitution of the United 
States. 

The first century in the history of the American nation 
was destined to see more wonderful changes in the ways in 
which people worked, traveled, and lived than all the pre- 
ceding ages had witnessed. In this chapter we shall see what 
the old-time American life was like before inventions and 
discoveries almost without number swept it away. In the next 



OUR PEOPLE ABOUT 1800 257 

we shall study the marvelous changes which gave us the world 
we know today. 

Our People about 1800. — The growth of our population 
since the days of our first presidents is no less marvelous than 
the change in our ways of working and living during the same The settled 
period. Our country now has about twenty times as many jgQQ*^°"* 
inhabitants as it had in 1800. The number of people in the 
United States was a httle less than four millions in 1790, some- 
what more than five milhons in 1800, and about seven millions 
in 1810. We were a rural people in those days. In 1800, Phila- 
delphia, New York, Baltimore, Boston, and Charleston were 
the only cities in the land that had a population of more than 
eight thousand, and the largest of them had only seventy 
thousand. A vast majority of our people still lived in the 
thirteen original states upon the Atlantic seaboard. But the 
call of the rising West was steadily luring the more daring and 
ambitious people of the older states toward the frontier. ' If 
you will draw a line upon the map from Cleveland to Cincin- 
nati, to Louisville, to Nashville, and thence to Savannah you 
will mark the limits of western settlement in 1800. When the 
nineteenth century opened, the most interesting and dramatic 
chapter in our history— the story of the westward march of 
our people to possess and subdue a vast, rich continent — was 
well begun. 

In all parts of America the people still lived the plain and 
simple life of colonial days. Yet there was a marked difference 
between the inhabitants of the different sections of the coun- Life in New 
try. In New England the scores of busy manufacturing cities England 
which now fill that section with the hum of industry had not 
yet grown up, but there were numerous villages along the sea- 
coast and beside the streams whose swift waters turned many 
a mill wheel. These villages, "with their neat white houses 
adorned with green blinds, the gardens, the grassy commons, 
the graceful elms, the excellent roads, the neat country stores," 
and the stony but well tilled little farms about them all spoke 
of the thrift of the people. The New Englanders retained many 
of the traits of their Puritan ancestors. They were a pious 
people much under the influence of their ministers. They were 
industrious in their habits and still inclined, like their fore- 
fathers, to frown upon popular sports and amusements. New 
17 



258 



LIFE IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 



England was more thickly settled than the other sections of 
the country, but much of the land was poor and many of the 
people sought their living upon the sea by fishing or in trade. 
Then, too, an ever increasing number of the sons of New 
England were leaving their native section to find new homes 
upon the richer lands of the West. 

The people of New England were mainly of English stock 
and the greater part of them were members of the Congrega- 
tional Church, which had been set up in that section by the 



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The people 
of the 
Middle 
States 



Broadway, Wew York, in the Kailiei Oayb of the Republic Froman old print. 

Puritans. The inhabitants of the Middle 8tat(^s, on the other 
hand, sprang from many races and represented many different 
religious denominations. Then, as now. New York City was 
the home of p(>o{)l(^ fi(nn every land in Europe. The descendants 
of the Quaker followers of William Penn and of the German 
and Scotch-Irish settlers who found safety from oppression 
in his colony, together with many recent pioneers from New 
England, made up the population of Pennsylvania. The natural 
resources of New York and Pennsylvania were greater and 
more varied than those of New England. Partly because of 
this fact, and partly because of the various races who settled 



OUR PEOPLE ABOUT 1800 



259 



in them, there was a far greater diversity of tastes and habits 
among the people of these states than among those who hved 
in the land of the Puritans. Yet life in the Middle States still 
ran its 'quiet course very much as it had before the Revolution. 
Washington Irving tells us that when Rip Van Winkle awoke 
about 1800, after a sleep of many years, he saw little that was 
new to him except the sti'ang(> faces in the places of the old 
familiar ones. 

The people of the South, like those of the North, were 




A Southern Plantation House 
"Along the rivers in Virginia there were many large plantations whose owners lived 
in fine houses." 



mainly of English, Scotch, or Irish origin. But the climate and 
physical features of the South differed from those of the North ; Great 
and, as always happens where such differences exist, the people planters and 
of the South were unlike the men of the North in their habits farmers in 
and ways of living. A large part of the land in the South was the South 
still covered with forests, the roads were poor, and in general 
life was more backward in that section than in the North. 
There was also a greater contrast between the rich and the 
poor in the South than in any other section of the country. 
Along the rivers of Virginia and near the coast in South Caro- 
lina there were many large plantations, whose owners lived in 



260 LIFE IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 

fine houses, owned many negro slaves, and were often men of 
education and of wide influence in their communities. These 
rich planters were a proud but sociable and hospitable class, 
fond of outdoor life and of such sports as horse-racing. But 
the small farmers of the South, who lived in rude cabins in 
clearings in the woods, far outnumbered the wealthy planters. 
They were simple in their fives, very ignorant of the outside 
world, but jealous of their rights and always ready to fight to 
maintain them. 

The population of the West was growing rapidly when the 
nineteenth century opened. This section, which had only 
Pioneers of about one hundred thousand inhabitants in 1790, had nearly 
the growing four hundred thousand in 1800. South of the Ohio River the 
settlers were largely from the South and some of them had 
'brought their negro slaves with them. You will remember 
that slavery had been forbidden north of the Ohio River by 
the Ordinance of 1787. The people of the West came from 
the old states in the East, but their life on the frontier had a 
marked effect on their habits and character. It made them 
hardy, bold, self-reliant, and sometimes rough and boastful. 
In the early West all men had to work for a living and as a 
consequence there was far more equality among them than in 
the older settled sections of the country. Men became more 
neighborly and more democratic when they became pioneers. 

One hundred years ago nearly all the people in every section 
of our land lived a hearty and natural life in the open country. 
Health and Everywhere there was a rude plenty of the actual necessities 
disease ^f jj£g Yet we have better health and live longer than our 
ancestors did in those days, because we have learned truths 
about hygiene and sanitation of which they were ignorant. 
A century ago houses were poorly ventilated, food was often 
badly cooked, and nearly every man drank intoxicating liquor. 
Little attention was given to the purity of the water supply 
and typhoid fever was widely prevalent. There were dreadful 
epidemics of yellow fever in New York and Philadelphia for 
several years just before and after 1800. It is now Imown 
that this disease, which was then common in the South, is 
transmitted from man to man only by a particular kind of 
mosquito, and that it can be prevented everywhere by exter- 
minating these mosquitoes. Vaccination was not commonly 



FARMING IN THE EARLY DAYS 



261 



practiced until the early part of the nineteenth century, and 
before it became general thousands died of smallpox every 
year. On the frontier nearly every one suffered from malaria. 
It was only through a long and bitter experience with these 
and other preventable diseases that our people slowly learned 
the need of discovering and obeying the laws of health. 

Farming in the Early Days of the Republic. — When the 
nineteenth century dawned the American people were a race 
of farmers. In all sections of our country the cultivation of A race of 
the soil was the chief means of making a living. Nearly all farmers 
the farms in the northern states, and many of those in the 
South, were small or of moderate size. The small American 
farm of those days 
was almost always 
tilled by its owner 
with the help of 
his sons and of an 
occasional hired 
man. Sometimes 
neighbors helped 
each other by work- 
ing together at 
husking bees, log- 
rollings, or barn- 
raisings. In the South there were many very large farms or 
plantations, as they were called, upon which the labor was per- 
formed by negro slaves. 

The implements used in 1800 were still those of colonial 
times. Clumsy wooden plows and harrows were practically 
the only agricultural machines drawn by horses or oxen. Most Tools and 
farm work was then done with spades, heavy hoes, wooden implements 
forks and rakes, and scythes, sickles, and flails. On the western 
frontier the axe was the tool oftenest in the hands of the settler 
as he cleared away the heavy forest. The use of such tools 
made farming the hardest kind of manual labor. Better 
agricultural implements came into use very slowly. The first 
iron plow was patented in 1797 and such plows were gradually 
introduced during the next twenty-five years. A patent was 
issued for the grain cradle in 1803, and about the same time 
the fanning mill for cleaning grain after it is threshed was 




A Grain Cradle 



262 



LIFE IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 



Crops and 

domestic 

animals 



invented. But most of our modern farm machinery, as we shall 
see, did not begin to come into use until after 1830. 

Our ancestors one hundred years ago raised most of the 
common food plants and domestic animals that we grow today. 
Wheat, rye, oats, and barley, cabbages and turnips, apples and 
peaches had been brought by the early colonists from their 
Old World homes. Indian corn, potatoes, and pumpkins were 
natives of America. The domestic animals, horses, cattle, 
hogs, and sheep, came from Europe to America with the 
settlers. These animals were raised in most of the settled 
parts of the country, though oxen were still more widely used 
than horses for draft purposes. In the South tobacco was the 
most valuable crop until 1803 when the first place was taken 

by cotton. After they had 
cleared their lands, the west- 
ern settlers farmed very 
much as they had in their 
earlier homes in the East. 

In the early years of 
our national life the Ameri- 
can farmer was handicapped 
by the difficulty of trans- 
porting his produce to 
market. But land was 
plentiful and cheap, and it 
was easy for every man to 
acquire a farm of his own 
upon which he could make a living for his family, even though 
he had few conveniences and little ready money. With the 
invention of farm machinery and the building of railroads, 
after 1830, American agriculture entered upon a new period of 
rapid growth and great prosperity. 

Manufacturing and Trade. — The small part of the American 
people who did not live upon farms in 1800 were mostly engaged 
in manufacturing, in fishing, or in some form of trade or com- 
homespun" merce. Manufactures were in a very backward condition. 
The people were still living in the age of "homespun." In 
many sections of the country there was a spinning wheel and 
a loom in almost every house. A large part of the coarse linen 
and woolen cloth with which our people were clothed in those 



A land of 
rude plenty 




Cutting iobacco in the Field 



The age of 



MANUFACTURING AND TRADE 



263 



days was made in their own homes. Such necessities as furni- 
ture, shoes, hats, and many other things, which are now made 
by machinery in factories, were then made by hand by mechanics 
in vilhige workshops or on plantations. For cotton cloth, 
crockery, china and glass ware, the finer kinds of hardware, 
knives, tools, and a hundred other things in daily use we were 
still dependent upon the manufacturers of Great Britain. 

The call of the sea had ever met an eager response from 
the dwellers upon our Atlantic seaboard. Thousands of hardy 



.c--'> 




A Swift-Sailing Ship 

New England sailors were engaged in fishing for cod. Thou- Wonderful 
sands more hunted the whale in the icy waters of the distant growth of our 
Arctic and Antarctic oceans. Still larger numbers found 
employment in foreign commerce. The increase of our tonnage 
and the growth of our foreign trade during the first twenty years 
of our history ur^der the Constitution "has no parallel in the 
commercial annals of the world." The nations of Europe were 
almost constantly at war from 1792 until 1814. This war 
created a great demand for our flour and meat. There was 
also a growing demand for our wool, cotton, and other raw 
materials of manufacturing. These eager European demands 
for our products wonderfully stimulated our trade. Our ship- 



264 



LIFE IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 



yards were busy building new ships. The tonnage of American 
vessels was more than six times as large in 1805 as it had been 
in 1789. American shipowners not only carried an ever in- 
creasing share of our own exports and imports but at the 
same time much of the trade between the warring European 
nations and their colonies fell into our hands. We were also 
developing a rich "China trade." Swift-sailing chpper ships 
made their way around Cape Horn to the Far East, where 




Early trans- 
portation 
was slow and 
expensive 



The Stage Coach from New York to Philadelphia One Hundred Years Ago 

they exchanged their cargoes for the tea, spices, muslins, and 
silks of the Orient. 

Transportation and Travel. — Before the railroads were 
Imilt it w.as difficult and expensive to carry the products of 
the farms to the seaports whence they could be shipped to 
the markets of the world. It was just as hard to bring to the 
people of the interior the imported goods which they needed. 
There had long been an active coasting trade, and navigable 
rivers like the Hudson and the James were highways into the 
interior of the country. The settlers in the West, who hved 
near the tributaries of the Mississippi, had in that river an 
open road to the port of New Orleans. But a waterway to 



TRANSPORTATION AND TRAVEL 265 

market was beyond the reach of many of our people, and for 
these the opening of roads and the development of means of 
transportation early became matters of vital importance. 

In the older states of the East heavily laden wagons crept 
along the country roads toward the seaport towns or moved 
homeward with such goods as the merchants of those towns its 
offered for sale. Farther west, long trains of pack horses difficulties 
followed the l^ridle paths through the forests and over the 
mountains. Such methods of transportation were slow and 
expensive. The roads were rough and in the spring the mud 
made them almost impassable. There were few bridges. The 
smaller streams were forded and the larger rivers were crossed 
by ferries. As late as 1803 the freight rate for hauling mer- 
chandise between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh was five dollars 
per hundred pounds. 

While Washington was president the people began to 
build stone roads called "turnpikes." The first of these roads 
was the famous "Lancaster Pike" in Pennsylvania, built The age of 
between 1792 and 1794. Soon many other turnpikes were turnpikes 
built in various parts of the country. Most of these early stone 
roads were constructed by private companies which were given 
the right to collect toll upon them. Sometimes the state gave 
money to aid in their construction. During the first half of 
the nineteenth century a large part of the inland commerce of 
our country flowed along the turnpikes leading to the eastern 
citi(\s. On them great trains of six-horse wagons bore the 
produce of the country and along them herds of cattle, sheep, 
and swine were driven to market. Stage coaches carrying mail 
and passengers dashed past the slowly moving wagons and 
herds. At short intervals along the turnpikes wayside taverns 
provided food and lodging for drovers, teamsters, and travelers. 

Few people traveled far from home in the early years of 
our nation's history. Those who did, rode on horseback or 
took one of the stage coaches which ran between the principal Travel by 
towns. A long journey by stage coach was a tedious and tire- stage coach 
some undertaking. The start was often made before daybreak, 
and with frequent changes of horses the stage toiled on until 
long after dark. The weary traveler ate supper at a wayside 
inn and hurried off to bed in order to be ready to start again 
at three o'clock the next morning. The journey from Boston 



266 



LIFE IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 



to New York took from three to six days. In 1804 a through 

line of stage coaches was established from Philadelphia to 

Pittsburgh. This trip lasted about seven days and the fare 

varied from fourteen to twenty dollars. 

The old-time turnpikes still exist and the general use of 

the automobile has recently revived interest in good roads. 
The changes But most of the old toll gates are gone, the wayside taverns 
of a century ^^ve been abandoned as public houses, and the long trains 

of wagons, the driven herds, and the hurrying stage coaches 

long since vanished from American life. 

The Intellectual Life. — Thus far in this chapter we have 




Signs of 

intellectual 

life 



been studying the social and industrial life of our people a 
century and more ago. But the growth of their intellectual 
life is no less important. The intellectual life of a people is 
expressed in their schools, newspapers, books, and pictures. 
Nowadays every community has a free school, nearly every 
town has a newspaper and a public library, and most of our 
great cities boast of their fine-ai't galleries. In the early years 
of the republic the American people enjoyed few of these 
advantages. At that time they were too busy clearing away 
the forest and making farms and homes in a new land to give 
much attention to literature and art. 

For half a century after the Revolution progress in educa- 
tion was slow in the United States. School life in the small 



THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE 



267 



and uncomfortable schoolhousos under poorly prepared teach- Schools of 
ers, who maintained a harsh discipline and taught from dry ^^^ olden 
and uninteresting textbooks, was very much what it had been '™^ 
during the colonial period. In New England and in the new 
settlements growing up north of the Ohio River the schools 
were supported by taxes upon all the people, but in the Middle 
States and in the South it was the general rule that parents 
should look after the 
education of their own 
children. But the mass 
of the people at this 
time were too poor and 
many of them too in- 
different to the value 
of an education to 
maintain the necessary 
schools. Some of the 
states, it is true, pro- 
vided free instruction 
for those who were too 
poor to pay for it. 
These "pauper schools," 
as they were called, 
were shunned as de- 
grading by those who 
could afford to pay, 
while attendance upon 
them was despised by 
the poor as a public 
badge of their pov- 
erty. Under these conditions it is not strange that a large part 
of the people remained uneducated. 

Yet even in the earliest years of our national history there 
were signs of the coming of better days in education. Just 
after the Revolution new and better textbooks, the most Improve- 




Noah Webster 



famous of which were Webster's "Spelling-Book," Daboll's ™«°^ i" 



"Arithmetic," and Morse's "Geography," were published. A 
little later Sunday-schools were estabhshed to teach boys who 
were employed during the week to read and write. Outside 
of a few New England towns there were then no pubhc high 



education 



268 



LIFE IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 



schools, but their place was taken in part by academies which 
were springing up in the East and West alike. New colleges 
were founded and just before 1800 the first of a long list of 
state universities was established. 

The newspapers of a hundred years ago were few in number 




To the PUBLIC. 

THE FLYING MACHINE, kept by 
John Mercereau, at the Kew Blaiing- Star- Ferry, 
near New-York, fets off from Powles Hook every Mon- 
day, "Wednefday, and Friday Mornings, for Philadelphia, 
and performs the Journey in a Day and a Half, for the 
Summer Seaibn, iill the lilof November ; from that Time 
to go twice a Week till the firft of May, when they 
again perform it three Times a Week- When the Stages 
go only ivfice a Week, they iet off Mondays and Thurf 
dayj. The Waiggons in Philadelphia fet out from the 
Sign of the George, in Second-ftteet, the fame Morning. 
The Paflengers are defired to crofs the Ferry the Evening 
before, as the Stages muft fet off early the next Morning 
The Price for each Paflenger is T<fr/»/>''J'A////«^j, Prop, and 
Goods as ufual. PafTengers going Parf of the Way to pay 
m Proportion. 

As the Proprietor has made fuch Improvements upon 
tfie Machines, one of which is in Imitation of a Coach, 
he hopes to merit the Favour of the Publick. 

JOHN MERCEREAU. 



Advertisement from a New York Newspaper of 1771 



and very unlike the great journals which come to our homes 

Early every day now. Most of them were weeklies which did not 

newspapers circulate far from the place in which they were published. 

They contained very little news and were largely given up to 

advertisements and to dry essays on literary and political 



THE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE 



269 



literature 



topics. The Pennsylvania Packet, foundeci in 1784, was the 
first daily newspaper in the United States. About the same 
time the first hterary magazines in America made their appear- 
ance. 

' Our people had few good books when Washington was 
president except those which they imported from England. 
Benjamin Franklin was the greatest American man of letters The dawn 
of the eighteenth century and several of the leaders in the o( American 
Revolution were able writers upon political topics. But the 
beginnings of a real American literature came in the years 
just after the War 
of 1812 with the 
appearance of Bry- 
ant's "Thanatop- 
sis," Washington 
Irving's "Sketch 
Book," and the first 
of a long series of 
famous novels by 
James Fenimore 
Cooper. 

Benjamin West 
was the first great 
American artist. 
He was born and 
educated in Penn- 
sylvania but went 
to live in London, w^here he rose to be president of the Royal 
Academy. Copley, Peale, Stuart, and Trumbull were famous 
portrait painters of the period of the Revolution and the years 
following it. The art of photography had not yet been devel- 
oped, and we owe to these painters our loiowledge of the 
appearance of the men who won the independence and estab- 
lished the government of the United States. 

The Spirit of the People. — The change in the spirit of the 

American people since the time when Washington was president 

is almost as great as the changes in their ways of working and Lack of care 

traveling. Kindness and sympathy are national traits now. j^"" *^®, ^ 

. dependent 

Nowhere in the world are the sick, the unfortunate, and the 

insane better cared for than in our country. The humane 




Our first 
artists 



A Quaker Meeting House 
Friends' Meeting House at Doylestown, Pa. 



270 



LIFE IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 



spirit which prompts us to care for those in need hardly existed 
at the close of the eighteenth century. In those days people 
who could not pay their debts were thrown into jail, and 
criminals were still branded with hot irons or flogged, as they 
had been for centuries. The prisons were stifling places Unfit 
for the habitation of any human being. In all the land there 
was no such thing as an asylum for the deaf and dumb or bhnd 
or a hospital for the insane. Yet a new sense of the duty of 
the people to aid the helpless and the weak was in the air, and 
the nineteenth century was to witness a marvelous growth in 
the spirit of helpfulness and benevolence. 

The Americans of 1800, like the colonists for two hundred 
years before that time, were a religious people. The church 
Progress in was the center of interest in nearly every community. Before 
religion the Revolution the Congregational Church in New England and 

the Episcopal Church in several of the other colonies had been 
supported by taxation, but sooner or later such support was 
withdrawn and all religious denominations were put on the same 
footing of complete freedom to manage their affairs in their 
own way. This has been the rule in our country ever since. 
The freedom which all forms of religion have long enjoyed in 
the United States has been attended by the broadest spirit 
of toleration found anywhere in the world. 

The spirit of democracy was growing rapidly in our country 
during its early years under the Constitution. We had said 
The growth in the Declaration of Indepenctence that governments derive 
of democracy their just powers from the consent of the governed. But for 
a long time om* theory was better than our practice. In nearly 
every state a man must own a certain amount of land or have 
a specified income before he could vote. In some of the states 
there were religious tests for office-holding. The democratic 
party, of which Jefferson was the great leader, saw clearly 
that all these restrictions must be swept away if men were 
to be really free. We have seen how the election of Jefferson 
in 1801 was a triumph for democracy. During the first half 
of the nineteenth century our government in the states and in 
the nation became democratic in fact as well as in name. 

Our ancestors who organized the government of the 
o?oS^^^"^ United States believed in themselves and in their country, 
country They were practical, inventive, industrious, and ambitious. 



REFERENCES 271 

Foreign travelers who visited them said that they cared for 
nothing but money. Yet they had the vision to see the future 
of the vast, rich continent upon whose eastern border most 
of them hved and the courage and fortitude to undertake its 
conquest. Their success in this toilsome yet romantic under- 
taking has given us the great, free, prosperous land we love 
and serve, — the United States of America. 

REFERENCES 

McMaster, History of the People of the United States, I, 1-102, II, 
538-582; Schouler, History of the United States, II, 230-309; Adams, 
History of the United States, I, 1-184; Bassett, The Federalist System, 
Chaps. XI, XIII; Coman, Industrial History of the United States; Bogart, 
Economic History of the United Stales; Thompson, History of the United 
States; Earle, Stage Coach and Tavern Days, 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. Wlien Washington was President. Bassett, The Federalist System, 
150-162. 

2. The State of Society, 1789-1801. Bassett, The Federalist System, 
150-162. 

3. Farming a Century Ago. Bogart, Economic History of the United 
States, 140-143. 

4. Life in the South. McMaster, History of the People of the United 
States, I, 71-74. 

5. Life in the West. Schouler, History of the United States, II, 
270-280. 

6. The Conestoga Wagon. Earle, Stage Coach and Tavern Days, 
245-252. 

7. The Pains of Stage Coach Travel. Earle, Stage Coach and Tavern 
Days, 361-372. 

8. The Doctor of the Old School. McMaster, History of the People 
of the United States, I, 27-31. 

9. The Old-time Min:stcr. McMaster, Hi.story of the People of the 
u United States, I, 31-35. 

10. Early Newspapers. McMaster, History of the l^eople of the 
United States, I, 35-38. 

11. Crime and Its Punishment. McMaster, History of the People of 
the United States, I, 98-102. 

12. The Characteristics of Our People in 1800. Adams, History of 
the United States, I, 41-74. 



272 LIFE IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 

13. Our Early National Traits. Schouler, History of the United 
Slates, II, 251-255. 

14. Early American Ideals. Adams, History of the United States, I, 
156-184. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Novels: Stowe, The Minister's Wooing; Old-Tlme Folks; Sam Law- 
son's Oldtime Fireside Stories; Judd, Margaret; Johnston, Lewis Rand; 
Banks, Round Anvil Rock; Hancock, Bronson of the Rabble; Sedgwick, 
Hope Leslie. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Do you think that we are happier than our ancestors were one 
hundred years ago? Why? Do you live in the city or the country? Which 
is preferable as a place of residence? Why do you think so? 

2. What are the five largest cities in the United States now? How 
many times has our population doubled since the first census was taken? 
In what section of the country would you have preferred to live one hundred 
years ago? Why? 

3. What influence did life upon the frontier have upon the early 
settlers? What conditions tend to make us more healthy than our ancestors 
were one hundred years ago? Are there any conditions now that tend 
to make us less liealthy than they were? 

4. Have you ever seen all the farm implements named in this chapter? 
What vegetables commonly grown now were not cultivated one hundred 
years ago? For what common foods do we now depend upon foreign 
countries? Are we still dependent upon foreign manufacturers for any 
needful articles? 

5. Contrast a journey of one hundred miles a century ago with a 
simdar one today. How far have you ever traveled from your home? 

6. How do our schools differ from those of 1800? Contrast our 
newspapers with those of 1800. Do you read a daily newspaper? Why? 

7. Are we more or less religious tlian our people were in 1800? Why 
are we more humane than people were when our country was young? 

8. What do we owe to our ancestors of long ago? 



CHAPTER XIV 

The Industrial Revolution 

New Ways of Working and Living. — Prior to the second 

half of the eighteenth century the work on the farms and in 

the shops everywhere in the world had been done by hand Inventions 

with the aid of a few simple tools. But about the time of the cause a 

. . great 

American Revolution a great change in industry was taking industrial 

place in England. This change was brought about by the revolution in 
invention of labor-saving machines with which one man could ^6^^^" 
do as much work as many men had done by hand. This trans- 
formation from hand labor to machine production is called the 
Industrial Revolution. It has had a greater influence upon 
our ways of working and living than all the changes in politics 
and government in the last two hundred years. 

Between the close of the Revolutionary War and the end 
of the War of 1812 the influence of the Industrial Revolution 
began to be felt in America. Articles that hitherto had been Similar 
made by village artisans or plantation mechanics began to changes in 
be manufactured by machinery in factories. Our people have 
a special aptitude for invention, and the use of labor-saving 
machinery has steadily increased in our country for a hundred 
years. As a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, brought 
about by this widespread use of machinery, greater changes 
have taken place in our ways of manufacturing, in our mode 
of travel, in our commerce, and in our methods of agriculture 
during the last century than the world had witnessed in the 
preceding five thousand j^ears. 

Spinning and Weaving. — The first step in the Industrial 
Revolution was the invention of new machinery for spinning 
and weaving. Ever since the dawn of civilization thread and New 
yarn had been spun with a simple spinning wheel and woven machines for 
into cloth upon a hand loom. As it took a great deal longer to P*'^'""^ 
spin the thread than it did to weave it into cloth, men were 
eager to find some way of spinning more rapidly. In 1764 
James Hargreaves, an illiterate weaver of Lancashire, England, 
18 273 



274 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



The power 
loom 




Hargreave's Spinning Jenny 



invented a machine with which eight threads could be spun 
at the same time. Hargreaves named this machine the "Spin- 
ning Jenny" in honor of his 
wife. Before long a "spin- 
ning jenny" was made with 
which as many as eighty 
threads could be spun at 
once. About the same time 
a better method of spin- 
ning was invented by an- 
other Englishman named 
Richard Arkwright. Arkwright's machine had to be driven by 
artificial power, and it was called the "water frame" because 
of the water wheels that 
were used to run it. In 
1779 Samuel Crompton, 
an ingenious weaver who 
saw that while Arkwright's 
"water frame" was more 
rapid, Hargreav(>s spin- 
ning jenny would spin a 
finer thread, combined the 
two machines into one 
called the "mule." Soon 
machines were made which 
could spin several thous- 
ands threads at once. 




Arkwright's First Spinning Frame 



At first the thread made with the new spinning machines 
was woven into cloth upon the old hand looms. But during 

the closing years of the 
eighteenth century Edward 
Cartwright, a clergyman 
in the South of England, 
gradually perfected a new 
power loom which soon came 
into general use. The ma- 
chines which were thus revo- 
lutionizing the manufacture 

Crompton's Spinning Mule ^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ adapted 

to the spinning and weaving of wool and other textile materials. 




THE STEAM ENGINE 275 

Cloth could now be woven much more rapidly than ever before. 
In the meantime great improvements had been made in all the 
other processes in the manufacture of cottdn, woolen, and 
linen goods, such as ('()ml)ing and carding the raw material 
and fulling and dyeing the finished product. 

In tlu> old days when textile goods were made by hand 
their manufacture was carried on in private houses or in small 
shops. At the close of our colonial period, for example, there The rise of 
was a spinning wheel in almost evcvy house and hand looms the factory 
were found in many homes. But the new machinery for making ^^^ ®°^ 
cloth, whose invention we have just described, was large and 
heavy and required great power to run it. It was soon found 
to be an advantage to put it in large establishments called 
factories and to employ in these factories the spinners and 
weavers who had previously worked at home. During the 
nineteenth century the factory system was gradually extended 
to many other lines of manufacturing until it almost entirely 
displaced the old-time household industries. 

The new machines for spinning and weaving were invented 
in England, but their introduction into the United States began 
the very year that Washington became president. In 1789 Early 
Samuel Slater, a young Englishman who had l)een employed factories in 
in the Arkwright factory, came to America and was engaged states 
to build and operate a spinning mill at Pawtucket, Rhode 
Island. Slater made the machinery for spinning, taught the 
workmen how to operate it, and from the start, his mill was a 
success. For some years the manufacture of cotton grew 
slowly in the United States, but after 1807 the Embargo, the 
Non-Intercourse Law, and the War of 1812 greatly quickened 
it. The eight thousand spindles in the country in 1808 had 
increased to five hundred thousand in 1815. In 1814 the 
power loom was introduced into our country by Francis C. 
Lowell. The factory system of making textiles spread rapidly 
and soon there were many factory towns in New England 
and in the middle states. 

The Steam Engine. — The value of the new inventions for 
making textiles depended upon the possession of power to run 
the heavy machinery and of raw material out of which to Power and 
manufacture the cloth. Fortunately these necessary factors r^^ material 
were supplied by the steam engine and the cotton gin, two "^^ 



276 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



epoch-making inventions which were made about the time 
the machines for spinning and weaving were being perfected. 
The power of steam had long been known, and a very 
crude form of the steam engine had been used to pump water 
Watt invents out of mines for some time; but steam power was not available 
for manufacturing purposes until James Watt, a Scotch inventor, 
developed an improved steam engine in the latter part of the 
eighteenth century. Watt's invention was first patented in 



the steam 
engine 



It takes the 
place of 
water power 




O Piihli'tliir'^' Photo Service. 
Picking Cotton 

1769, and he began the manufacture of steam engines in 1781. 
Four years later a steam engine was used for the first time to 
drive the machinery in a cotton mill. 

The earliest factories both in England and America were 
run by water power, and of course could only be built where 
sucih power was available. But when the steam engine began 
to come into general use factories could be built wherever 
desired. In the course of time steam power very largely super- 
seded water power for driving machinery. The wonderful 
changes which the Industrial Revolution has wrought in the 



THE COTTON GiN 



277 



world are due in large part to the inventive genius of James 
Watt. 

The Cotton Gin. — The enormous development of cotton 
factories which followed the invention of the modern machines 
for spinning and weaving would have been impossible without Cleaning 
a corresponding increase in the cotton crop. The culture of ?°^*^" ^^ 
cotton was introduced into our country about the time of the 
Revolutionary War, but at first very little was grown because 
of the difficulty of separating the seed from the fiber. This 
work had to be done by hand, and one person could clean 
only about one pound of cotton in a day. In the meantime it 
was found that our 
southern states 
were peculiarly 
adapted to the 
growth of cotton, 
and the improved 
machinery coming 
into use in England 
was creating a great 
demand for t h e 
crop. If only some 
way could be found 
to prepare the 
cotton fiber for 
market the cultiva- 
tion of cotton 
would become one of the leading industries of the United 
States. 

This difficulty was solved by the cotton gin, one of the 
most important machines ever invented. The inventor, Eli 
Whitney, was a native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Whitney 
Yale College. Shortly after his graduation Whitney went to |,°yf^*^J^® 
Georgia to teach. Here his attention was called to the difficulty 
of separating cotton from its seed. He procured a pound of 
raw cotton and began to study it. Working under great 
difficulties, for he had to make even his own tools, Whitney 
finally made a machine by which one person could clean three 
hundred pounds of cotton in a day. The cotton gin soon 
came into general use throughout the South. The production 




Whitney's Cotton Gin 



cotton gin 



278 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



The result of cotton grew by leaps and bounds. The United States, which 
produced only one million five hundred thousand pounds of 
cotton in 1790 grew thirty-five inilhon pounds in 1800 and 
double that amount in 1805. Eli Whitney's invention made 
our southern states the greatest cotton-growing region in the 
world. 

Iron and Coal. — The Industrial Revolution witnessed 

changes in the methods of smelting iron and in the manufacture 

ways of <^f articles made of iron and steel almost as great as those which 

working iron took place in the making of textiles. The smelting of iron was 

a very old industry 
in England, but it 
was declining in the 
earlier part of the 
eighteenth century 
because of the ex- 
haustion of the 
supply of charcoal 
which was used in 
the process. In 
1760 an English- 
man named Roe- 




buck made a new 
kind of blast fur- 
nace by which iron 



The growth 
of the iron 
industry in 
America 



I Keystone View Co., MeadvUt 
A Modern Blast Furnace 
Making iron from iron ore. 

ore could be smelt(xl with coal as fuel, and thirty years later 
the steam engine began to be used to cause the blast. About 
the same time other improvements were made in the processes 
of manufacturing iron. By increasing the demand for coal 
these changes greatly increased its production, and at the 
same time they stinmlated the making of all kinds of iron and 
steel wares. 

The smelting of iron in a small way was carried on in 
several of the colonies before the Revolution. Pots, kettles, 
andirons, and other needed articles were cast or forged for 
home use, and some pig iron was exported to England. But the 
first important development of the iron industry in America 
was west of the AlU^ghanies. Rich deposits of iron were found 
in the valleys of the Monongahela and the Allegheny , and the 
first furnace was set up in that section in 1790. Furnaces, 



THE STEAMBOAT 



279 



forges, and iron mills multiplied, and in the coiu'se of time 
iron became the dominant manufacturing interest of Penn- 
S34vania. Because it controlled the great waterway to the 
West, Pittsburgh was the natural center for the rising industry. 
In the early nineteenth century nails, hinges, axes, spades, 
plows, knives, pots, and kettles from the iron and steel mills 
of Pittsburgh were shipped down the Ohio and the Mississippi 
to the rapidly growing settlements in the West. 

Because wood was abundant and cheap in America coal 
only slowly came into use as fuel. The existence of anthracite 
coal in northeastern Pennsylvania was known as early as the 
time of the Revolution and the first settlers at Pittsburgh dug 
bituminous coal from a bluff below the town. For a long time 
the people did not know how to burn hard coal, but in 1812 
a man who was engaged in making wire near Philadelphia 
found out how to use it 

to advantage in heating a^^^^?^^'^"^^' 

iron. Some years later, 
after canals and railroads 
were built to carry it to 
market, anthracite coal 
came into general use. 
The entire region about 
Pittsburgh is underlaid 
with some of the thickest 
beds of bituminous coal in the whole country. When this 
fuel took the place of charcoal in the blast furnaces of western 
Pennsylvania about 1840, it still further stimulated the u-on 
industry of that region. 

The Steamboat. — When the nineteenth century opened, 
men and goods were still carried from place to place upon the 
backs of animals, in wheeled vehicles, or in boats propelled by 
oars or sails , as they had been for thousands of years. But the 
steam engine, which was beginning to promote a revolution in 
industry, was destined to make possible an even greater change 
in travel and transportation. 

Steam was first used as a motive power in boats. As early 
as 1787 John Fitch exhibited a steamboat upon the Delaware 
River, and three years later he built a steamboat which made 
regular trips upon that river between Philadelphia and Trenton. 



Our people 
begin to use 
coal 




¥.•''■■& 



Fitch's Steamboat 



Coming 
changes in 
transporta- 
tion 



Fitch and 
Rumsey 



280 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



Robert 
Fulton 



But Fitch's enterprise did not pay and his boat was abandoned. 
About the same time James Rumsey ran a steamboat upon the 
Potomac, but he was no more successful than Fitch in making 
his venture a commercial success. It was reserved for Robert 
Fulton to succeed where Fitch and Rumsey had failed. 

Robert Fulton, the son of an Irish immigrant, was a native 
of Pennsylvania. In early life he showed a marked taste for 
drawing and painting, and for a time he was a pupil of the 
great artist Benjamin West. But Fulton soon found that his 




steamboats on the Mississippi 

true field of labor was in mechanical invention. Turning his 
attention to the problem of navigation by steam, he built the 
Clermont, the first successful steamboat in the world. On its 
first trip in 1807 the Clermont ran up the Hudson River from 
New York to Albany, one hundred and fifty miles in thirty-two 
hours, and made the return voyage in thirty, i ■ 

Most people reject and often ridicule a new idea. But 

when "Fulton's Folly," a§ his neighbors called the Clermont, 

Steamboats moved up the river against wind and current even those who 

come into ^iSid scoffed were quick to sec its value. The steamboat soon 

came into general use. The first one upon the Ohio River was 

built in Pittsburgh in 1811. There were steamboats upon the 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF 



281 



great lakes before 1820. The Savannah, a boat using both 
sails and steam, crossed the Atlantic in 1819, but it was about 
twenty years later before the first regular trans-Atlantic steam- 
ship line was established. 

The importance of river steamboats in promoting the 
development of the Middle West can hardly be overestimated. 
That section had always sent much of its produce to market They help 
down the Mississippi and its tributaries, but it had been very ^" *^® devel- 
difficult to bring goods up the rivers. With the coming of the the West 
steamboat, traffic in both directions upon the western waters 




The "Savannah" Crossing the Atlantic 



became easy and profitable. Pittsburgh became the great 
starting point for the river trade, and more than ever the Ohio 
River was the great highway between the East and the West. 
The Protective Tariff.— The War of 1812 had a very great 
influence in promoting the growth of manufacturing in the 
United States. The long war in Europe, which had been going The War of 
on for twenty years before 1812, had created a great demand 1812 pro- 
for our foodstuffs and made our farming and our commerce American 
very profitable. But between 1808 and 1815 the Embargo, manufac- 
the Non-Intercourse Act, and our second war with Great t'^""? 
Britain swept our commerce from the sea. Men who could no 
longer safely invest their money in ships and cargoes began 
to build factories and engage in manufacturing. The goods 



282 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



The return 
of peace 
threatened 
our rising 
industries 



Demand for 
a protective 
tarifif 



Reasons for 
and against 
protection 



they made found a ready sale at high prices during the War of 
1812 because it was then impossible to get the imported wares 
that we were accustomed to use. We were compelled to do 
without many articles that we had hitherto imported or to 
make them at home. As this condition arose just at the time 
that our people were turning their attention to labor-saving 
machinery it helped to quicken the Industrial Revolution in 
America. 

The return of peace in 1815 at once threw open our ports 
to foreign trade. The English manufacturers, eager to regain 
the American markets which they had once enjoyed, promptly 
sent shiploads of cotton and woolen cloth and iron wares to 
the United States. These English goods were sold at any 
prices which they would bring. The people were eager to buy 
the cheap imported goods, but our "infant industries," which 
were just beginning to grow, were threatened with ruin. Be- 
cause of the scarcity of skilled workmen and the high rate of 
wages in the United States we could not yet successfully com- 
pete with the British manufacturers. Many of the iron and 
textile mills on the Atlantic seaboard were forced to shut 
down and their employees were thrown out of work. The iron 
mills in western Pennsylvania could still go on, because the 
heavy expense of hauling the English goods across the moun- 
tains raised their price. 

The immediate outcome of this situation was an out- 
spoken demand for a protective tariff. We have already seen 
that the word "tariff" is used to express the rate of duty or 
tax — upon imported goods. In the end such a tax is paid by 
the consumer of the goods in the higher price which it makes 
him pay for them. If the tariff is high enough to make the 
imported goods cost as much or more than they can be made 
for in this country it is called protective because it enables 
the home manufacturers to compete successfully with the 
foreigners. Ever since 1789 the tjnited States had raided a 
part of its revenue by a tariff act, but the rate of duty had 
not been high enough to afford very much protection to our 
manufactures. 

The northern manufacturers, the western farmers, and the 
South Carolina planters, who hoped to build up cotton factories 
in their own state, all supported a protective tariff after the 



TURNPIKES AND CANALS 283 

War of 1812. Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun were their 
chief spokesmen. The advocates of protection argued that it 
would build up home industries and thus make our country 
independent of the rest of the world; that it would enable 
the manufacturers to pay. higher wages to their workmen; 
and that the growing factory towns would furnish good local 
markets in which the neighboring farmers could sell the products 
of their farms. On the other hand, the merchants and ship- 
owners of New England and most of the southern planters 
opposed the new policy on the grounds that it would injure 
our foreign trade, and that it would make all the people pay 
more for the protected goods in order to benefit a small number 
of manufacturers and their workmen. 

The friends of protection won the day, and in 1816 Congress 
passed the first tariff act whose chief purpose was protection. 
The manufacturers were not satisfied with the aid given them Early tariff 
by the law of 1816, and in 1824 the rates of duty were raised laws 
by another tariff act. By this time the South was almost 
solidly opposed to the protective policy. Very little manu- 
facturing was developing in that section, and it seemed to its 
farmers and planters that they were being taxed for the benefit 
of the northern manufacturers. On the other hand, the New 
Englanders were turning from trade to manufacturing and 
beginning to favor protection duties. In 1828 Congress passed 
a still higher tariff law. This act was so badly made that it 
was called the "tariff of abominations." All these laws helped 
to stimulate the growth of manufacturing in the United States. 

Turnpikes and Canals. — Ever since the first pioneers 
began to push westward in our country there has been a growing 
need for good roads to connect the settlements in the interior The need for 
with the seaboard. In the last chapter we saw how turnpilve good roads 
companies, often with state aid, built fine stone roads in the 
older states, and how the tides of inland trade and travel 
flowed back and forth upon them. So many of these roads 
were built during the first quarter of the nineteenth century 
that it is often called the "turnpike era" in our history. 

After new states began to grow up in the valley of the 
Mississippi it became vitally important that the western section 
should be bound to the East by better means of communication The National 
and transportation if we were ever to have a real nation. ^^^^ 



284 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



Recognizing this fact, in 1811 the United States government 
began to build a fine "National Pike" westward from Cmnber- 
land, Maryland. In time this "Cumberland Road/' as it is 
often called, was extended to Illinois, thus connecting the 
East and the Middle West by a good highway. 

The War of 1812 still further aroused the country to the 
Roads and necessity for better facilities for transportation. In 1816 
bum by' the Pi'^sident Madison urged Congress to provide for "a system of 
states roads and canals such as would have the effect of drawing 




The Erie Canal at Lockport, New York 



{From an old print) 



more closely together every part of our country." But when 
Congress, led by John C. Calhoun, passed a bill appropriating 
a large sum of money for internal improvements, Madison 
vetoed it. The president did this, not because he did not favor 
internal improvements, but because he thought that Congress 
had no power to spend money for them. As a consequence of 
this strict construction attitude of Madison and of his suc- 
cessor, James Monroe, most internal improvements continued 
to be made by the states instead of the national government. 
The greatest of these state undertakings was carried out 
by New York. For years DeWitt Clinton had Urged the dig- 



TURNPIKES AND CANALS 



285 



ging of a canal to connect Lake Erie with the Hudson River. The Erie 
When he became governor of New York this great work was Canal 
begun. On July 4, 1817, Governor Clinton threw out the 




The Erie Canal 

first shovelful of earth, and eight years later the Erie Canal 

was completed. Far reaching results followed the opening of 

this great waterway. Goods could now be easily carried between 

the Great Lakes and New 

York Harbor. The freight 

rate from Albany to Buffalo 

fell from one hundred and 

twenty dollars to fourteen 

dollars a ton. The people of 

the West could now buy 

the manufactured goods of 

the East very much more 

cheaply than ever before. 

Because it stood at the 

starting point of the best 

road into the interior of the 

country. New York City 

soon became and has ever 

, , , , , © Underwood &» Unricnrood, N. Y. 

Since remamed the largest The Present Erie Canal at Waterford, New York 

city in the United States. 

But New York was not alone in undertaking a great work 
of internal miprovement. Beginning about the time the Erie 
Canal was opened, the people of Pennsylvania built a great Similar 
highway of commerce from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. This »™prove- 
highway consisted in part of canals and in part of railroads other states 



Vi ^ iiiiiiMJilitf^ 




l-^;— ..SS*^:;! 







286 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



upon which the cars were drawn by horses or by stationary 
engines. Other canals were constructed in Pennsylvania until 

that state had a great canal 
system with a thousand miles 
of waterway. The other states 
were not far behind New York 
and Pennsylvania in under- 
taking great schemes of in- 
ternal improvement. The 
turnpikes and canals con- 
tinued to be the highways of 
trade and travel in the nation 
until the coming of the steam 
locomotive made the railroad 
a faster and cheaper means of 
.-^(ife^^C-jja^;^v^t-)5--->^-^r^-^^ ' ■ transportation. 

, A Sailing Car 

The Railroads.— While 

the people were spending 

The first large sums of money in dig- 

raiiroads gjj^or canals the building of 
railroads was begun, and in- 
ventors were experimenting 
with the steam locomotive 
which was soon to revolu- 
tionize the transportation 
of the world. Short rail- 
ways for hauling stone or 
coal and operated by hand 





=. HllljJr 



Horse-Power Locomotive 



or horse power had been 
used in England ever since 
the seventeenth century. 
During the first quarter of 
the nineteenth century sev- 
eral railways of this type 
were built in the United 
States. Between 1825 and 

Oliver Evans' Steam Carriage i oon m i u 

1830 railroads were begun 
westward from Philadelphia, Baltimore, Albany, and Charles- 




THE RAILROADS 



287 



ton, but only a few miles were actually built 
before the latter date. Horses were used to 
furnish the motive power on these earliest 
American railroads. 

Th^ honor of inventing the steam loco- 
motive belongs to George Stephenson, an 
Englishman who after many experiments 
made an engine which would run 




"Old Ironsides" (1832) 
Single pair of driving 
wheels. Weight about 
5 tons. 




Consolidation Type (1876) 
Four pairs of driving wheels. Weight 80 tons. 



miles an hour. In 
1829 a locomotive 
was imported from 
England, but it 
proved too heavy 
for the American 
track upon which it 
was placed. A year 
or two later loco- 
motives built in the 
United States began 



upon a 

railway track. In 1825 he put Invention of 
in operation the first steam the loco- 
railroad in Great Britain for 
carrying both freight and 
passengers. In 1830 Stephen- 
son built a new and im- 
proved locomotive which 
attained a speed of thirty-six 




Santa Fe Type (1903) 
Five pairs of driving wheels. Weight 225 tons. 



to be used on the new railroads. 
Some of the early American railroads were built by the 




Triplex Locomotive (1914) 
Twelve pairs of driving wheels. Weight 425 tons. 

Photographs by courtesy of the. Baldwin Locomotive Works. 



288 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



How early states, but most of them were constructed by private com- 
railroads panics and all of them sooner or later passed into private 
ownership. The early railways were not the well-built roads 
over which we now ride. In their construction heavy wooden 
rails were laid upon cross ties and thin strips of iron were then 
spiked on top of the wooden rails. These strips of iron often 
worked loose and curled over the wheels or pierced the bottom 
of the cars thus cavising numerous accidents. Later, iron rails 
were introduced, and these in turn gave place to the steel 
rails now in common use. The first railroad cars were built 



Railroads 
begin to 
displace 
canals 




Courtesy c/w N . Y. C. and II. R. R. R. 
The DeWitt Clinton and Coaches 
First steam railway train in New York State, 1831. 

like the stage-coaches, and the early locomotives were small 
and weak in comparison with the powerful railroad engines 
of the present time. 

The first railroads were built to supplement the canals 
and to connect natural waterways like rivers and lakes. No 
one supposed that they would ever take the place of water 
transportation. But the advantages of railroads over canals 
were soon apparent. Canal traffic, while safe and cheap, was 
very slow and was often interrupted by floods or frost. For 
example, ice closes the Erie Canal for several months in every 
year. In mountainous country a railroad can be built much 
cheaper than a canal, and there are many parts of the country 
where it is not practicable to build canals at all. When the 



GREAT CHANGES IN FARMING 289 

people began to realize these advantages of the railroads and 
to appreciate the speed and economy of travel and transporta- 
tion which they made possible, the country entered upon an 
era of rapid raih'oad building. The thirty-two miles of railroad 
in the United States in 1830 increased to nearly three thousand 
in 1840, to over ten thousand in 1850, and to more than thirty 
thousand miles in 1860. In fact, the growth of railroad mileage 
in our country has gone steadily on until the present time. 
We now have about a quarter of a million miles of railroad in 
the United States. 

The railroads have played a vital part in changing the 
old-time world described in the last chapter into the modern 
world in which we now live. In other words, they have been a The 
leading factor in the Industrial Revolution which has made influence 
our life so unlike that of our ancestors who lived a century 
ago. They saved time, created labor at good wages for many 
of our people, and made travel possible to people of moderate 
means. The quick and cheap transportation which they pro- 
vided stimulated business, enabled the farmer to sell his crops 
for better prices, and increased the value of his land. They 
made possible the development of great sections of the country 
which were far from all waterways. They gave a better postal 
service and made cheaper postage possible. Hand in hand with 
the railroads, and of inestimable value in helping to operate 
them, came the electric telegraph, which was invented by 
Samuel F. B. Morse in 1835 and first used in 1844. The rail- 
roads and the telegraph have helped to break down sectional 
barriers and to bind North, South, East, and West together 
in one common coimtry. They have thus played a mighty 
part in making our nation. 

Great Changes in Farming. — Farming was as completely 
revolutionized during the nineteenth century as every other 
kind of industry. But the transformation of agriculture began Farming 
later than that of manufacturing and of transportation. The ^"^iiged 
farm life pictured in the last chapter continued with very than other 
little change until after 1830. When the first railroads were industries 
begun in the United States, plows and harrows were still the 
only farm implements drawn by oxen or horses. Hay was still 
mown with a scythe and raked by hand. Grain was cut with 
a sickle or a cradle and threshed with a flail. But between 
19- 



290 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



1830 and 1860 farming in our country passed through a period 
of marvelous changes and expansion. 

The invention of farm machinery was by far the most 
important cause of this wonderful revolution in agriculture. 
Invention of During the generation between 1830 and 1860 many improve- 
ments were made in plows and harrows, and a great variety 
of cultivators, horse-hoes, grain drills, and corn planters were 
introduced. The mowing machine and the horse rake began 
to do much of the heavy manual labor of haying. The first 
reaper was patented in 1833, and after 1840 reapers rapidly 



farm 
machinery 




Covrtesy of the International Harvester Co. 
McCormick's First Reaper 

came into use. The invention of the reaper and of the threshing 
machine, which was made about the same time, were two of 
the most important events in the history of industry. These 
machines made possible the great crops of grain which have 
been grown in our country ever since they were introduced. 

While the invention of labor-saving farm implements was 

the most important cause of the vast expansion of agriculture 

Other causes in our country during the middle of the nineteenth century, 

of rapid several other causes helped to produce the same result. The 

development rapidly growing factory towns were giving the farmers a better 

home market for their crops. At the same time the peoples of 

Europe were steadily becoming more dependent upon America 



MEANING OF INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 291 

for a part of their supply of food. Our farmers could meet these 
new demands because of the extensive areas of new land which 
were being brought under the plow in the West and South. 
During the rapid development of the West, which we shall 
study in the next chapter, the prairies of the Mississippi Valley 
began to be occupied. The ease with which these grassy plains 
could be cultivated as soon as the settler reached them was in 
striking contrast to the years of toil which were necessary to 
cut down the hea\y forests and to clear the forest lands of 
stumps and roots. While the new farm machinery was not 




Courtesy of the International Harvester Co, 
Reaping by Modern Methods 
A gasoline tractor drawing two reapers and binders. These machines cut the grain, tie 
it in bundles and drop them alongside. 

much used in the cotton fields of the South, the rapid increase 
in the number of slaves made it possible to grow greater crops 
of cotton by constantly bringing more land under cultivation. 
Then, too, the railroads which were being steadily extended 
made it possible for the farmers to market their crops more 
easily, and to procure all sorts of manufactured articles of wliich 
they had hitherto been deprived because of the difficulty and 
expense of bringing them into the country. 

The Meaning of the Industrial Revolution. — The changes 
in industry which began in England in the second half of the -,, . 

eighteenth century and in our own country very early in the tion in 
nineteenth century, as the result of the invention of labor-saving industry 
machinery, have been going on ever since and are largely present^ ^^^ 
responsible for the ways of doing things and the mode of life mode of life 



292 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



It promotes 
the growth 
of cities 



that we now see around us. Let us examine some of the conse- 
quences of this vast and far-reaching Industrial Revolution. 

Before the changes in industry which we have been study- 
ing in this chapter nearly all manufacturing was done in the 
homes of the workmen or in small shops near at hand. These 
household industries could be carried on just as well in the coun- 
try or in villages or better than they could in the cities. Before 
the Industrial Revolution the cities of our country were fewer 
and very much smaller than at present. But when labor-saving 
machines were invented, and water power or steam was used 




Lowell, Massachusetts, an Early Manufacturing Town 

to drive them, it was found to be more economical to employ 
many workmen in the same mill. For this reason the factories 
were either located in cities, or towns quickly grew up about 
them. In these ways the introduction of the factory system of 
manufacturing helped to change the United States from a 
land of country dwellers to a nation more than half of whose 
people now live in cities and towns. 

At first thought it might seem that the invention of 

machines to save labor would throw men out of work. Some- 

The demand tim(;s this was true for a while. But in the long run the intro- 

increased'^^ duction of labor-saving machinery created a greater demand 

for workers than ever before. The cotton gin, for example, did 



MEANING OF INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 293 

the work of many slaves in cleaning cotton; but it so stimulated 
the cotton-growing industry that soon the slaves thus displaced 
and many more were employed in plowing, planting, culti- 
vating, and picking cotton upon the great plantations of the 
South. _ At the same time the lalwr of many more men was 
needed^ to make the gins, to prepare the wood and iron out of 
which they were made, and to transport the cotton crop to 
the markets of the world. This increasing demand for labor 
which came with the growth of, the factory system was con- 
stantly drawing the young men and women from the country 
to the manufacturing towns. At the same time it was pro- 
moting immigration. After 1840 great numbers of European 
workers began to seek jobs in America. 

In the old days of household industry nearly every work- 
man was his own master, or hoped to be after he had learned 
his trade and saved a little money to set up a shop of his own. Capitalists 
But it took a great deal more money than the workmen pos- and laborers 
sessed to build a factory and fill it with expensive machinery. 
Accordingly men with money built the factories and then em- 
ployed the laborers to work in them for wages. In this way 
the factory system tended to divide the industrial world into 
capitalists and laborers, and gave rise to disputes between 
capital and lal^or which have often proved troul^lesome even 
down to the present time. 

After the revolution in industry brought about by machin- 
ery, vastly larger quantities of manufactured goods were pro- 
duced than ever before. These goods were so economically Changes in 
made that they could be sold at a very low price. Cotton the daily life 
cloth for sheeting, for example, which cost forty cents a yard ° 
when it was woven by hand could be bought for seven cents a 
yard after the factory method of making it was fully developed. 
The masses of the people could now buy many things which 
formerly they had not been able to afford. At the same time 
many conveniences and comforts hitherto unknown began to 
appear in every home. The friction match took the place of 
the flint and steel, and the iron cook stove superseded the old- 
time fireplace. There was less work to do in the household 
than formerly, because many things once made in every house 
were now being manufactured in factories. In a word, the great 
revolution in industry caused by the spirit of invention was 



294 THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 

bringing about a change fully as remarkable in the daily life 
of the people. 

REFERENCES. 

Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution; Cheyney, Industrial History 
of England; Wright, Industrial Evolution; Coman, Industrial History of 
the United States; Bogart, Economic History of the United States ; Thomp- 
son, History of the Urdted States; McMaster, History of the People of 
the United Slates. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The New Machines for Spinning and Weaving. Cheyney, Indus- 
trial History of England, 203-212. 

2. Samuel Slater and His Work. McMaster, History of the People 
of the United States, II, 164-165. 

3. Eli Whitney. McMaster, History of the People of the United 
States, II, 161-163. 

4. The First Steamboats. McMaster, History of the People of the 
United States, III, 486-494. 

5. The Early Protective Tariff Laws. Coman, Industrial History 
of the United States, 187-192. 

6. From Path to Turnpike. Earle, Slago Coach and Tavern Days, 
223-240. 

7. The "Cumberland Road." Sparks, The Expansion of the American 
People, 259-264. 

8. The Erie Canal. Turner, Rise of the New West, 31-36. 

9. The First Railroads in America. Sparks, The Expansion of the 
A-neri-^in People, 274-289 

10. The Revohition in Farming. Bailey, Cyclopaedia of American 
^.qriudture, IV, 58-64. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Novels: Bronte, Shirley; Kingsley, Alton Locke; Disraeli, Sybil; 
Besant, The Children of Gibcon. 

Biographies: Smiles, Life of James Watt; Life of Stephenson; Knox, 
Life of Robert Fulton; Sutcliffe, Robert Fulton. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. What is meant by a "labor-saving" machine? Have you any 
such machines in your own home? Can you think of any such machines 
that have recently come into use? 



REFERENCES 295 

2. Make a list of the things that you can do that your great-grand- 
parents could not do when they were children. What could they do that 
you cannot do? 

3. What cities in our country are noted for the manufacture of textiles? 
What other power than steam is used to drive engines? What are our 
leading cotton-growing states? How much cotton is now grown in the 
United States each year? 

4. Where are the chief deposits of iron ore in the United States? 
What American cities are famous for their manufactures of iron and steel? 

5. Do you use anthracite or bituminous coal in your home? What 
does it cost a ton in your town? 

6. Make a list of all the reasons you can find /or and against a protec- 
tive tariff. 

7. What is meant by the statement that New York City stands at 
the starting point of the best road into the interior of the country? 

8. In what ways was the railroad an improvement over the canal? 
What advantages had the canal over the railroad? Write an essay upon' 
the influence of the railroads upon the history of our country. 

9. In what ways has the industrial revolution changed our daily life? 



CHAPTER XV 



The Rise of the Middle West 



Review 



Why the 
West grew 
rapidly after 
1815 



A New Rush into the West. — The story of the westward 
march of our people through the gaps of the Alleghanies, across 
the vast valley of the Mississippi, and over the mountain trails 
which led to the rich country on the Pacific Coast is the most 
interesting and the most important feature of our history. We 
have seen how Boone and Robertson led the vanguard in this 
conquest of the continent and gained a foothold on the eastern 
margin of the Mississippi Valley in Kentucky and Tennessee. 
We have followed George Rogers Clark and his heroic frontiers- 
men as they won the Northwest from the British in the clays of 
the Revolution. We have learned how the western lands were 
ceded by the states to the United States, how a public land 
system was devised, and how a territorial form of government 
was created by the great Ordinance of 1787. We have traced 
the life and growth of the early West until we saw Kentucky 
and Tennessee, and a little later Ohio, enter the Union as the 
first western states. 

This first movement of our people into the West occurred 
during the Revolution and the years which followed it. Another 
and far greater wave of western settlement started just after 
the War of 1812. The rapid growth of the West during the 
years following 1815 was due to several causes. In the first 
place it was easier and safer to go West than ever before. The 
appearance of the steamboat on the western rivers encouraged 
settlement in that section. The victories of Harrison and Jack- 
son over the Indians lessened the danger from Indian attacks 
and opened much new land to settlemefit. The government 
sold this land to settlers at two dollars per acre and made it 
easy for them to pay for it on the instalment plan. In the 
last chapter we saw how the sale of cheap English goods after 
the War of 1812 closed many of the mills and factories in oui- 
eastern states. Great numbers of the people who were thus 
thrown out of work sought new homes upon the cheap lands of 

296 



THE WESTERN SETTLERS 



297 



the West. At the same time the growing demand for cotton 
led many planters in the older states of the South to move to 
the fertile cotton lands in the territories bordering the Gulf of 
Mexico. ■ 

The Western Settlers. — The greater part of the settlers 
of the Middle West were the outcome of a natural sifting that 
was going on among the people of the older states in the East. The quality 
The bold, the restless, those who loved adventure, and thos(> ^f^^^^, 
who were dissatisfied with their condition or prospects at home 
and hoped to better them in a new country sought the frontier. 



pioneers 




ifi 

s K »^ 






■ ; MM 







The First Mill in Ohio 

The timid, the home-loving, and all who were contented with 
their lot remained behind. The stream of immigrants from the 
East was joined by another from Europe. After the close of 
the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 many of the hardy sons of the 
countries of northern Europe came to America and a large 
part of them found homes in the Middle West. Sometimes these 
newcomers from Europe settled in groups, like the Swiss at 
Vevay, Indiana, or the Dutch at Holland, Michigan, but the 
most of them were scattered" among the native Americans and 
soon became very much like them. 

Three distinct classes of people helped to bring civiliza- 



298 



THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE WEST 



Three 
classes of 
settlers 



The 

frontiers- 
man 



The 

permanent 

farmer 



The city 
builder 



Influence 

geography 

upon 

western 

growth 



tion into the western wilderness. They have been thus described 
by one who hved among them: 

"First comes the pioneer who depends for the subsistence 
of his family chiefly upon the natural growth of the vegetation 
called the 'range' and the proceeds of hunting. His imple- 
ments of agriculture are rude, chiefly of his own make, and his 
efforts are directed mainly to a crop of corn and a turnip patch. 
A field of a dozen acres is enough for his occupancy. It is 
quite immaterial whether he ever becomes the owner of the 
soil. He is an occupant for the time being, pays no rent, and 
feels as independent as the 'lord of the manor.' He builds 
his cabin, gathering around him a few other families of similar 
tastes and habits and 'settles' till the range is somewhat sub- 

clued and hunting 

a little precarious. 
" The next class 
purchase the land, 
add field to field, 
clear out the roads, 
throw rough 
bridges over the 
streams, put up 
hewn-log houses 
with glass windows 
and brick and stone chimneys, occasionally plant orchards,, 
build mills, schoolhouscs, court-houses, etc., and exhibit the 
picture and forms of plain, frugal, civilized life. 

"Another wave rolls on. The men of capital and enter- 
prise come. The small village rises to a spacious town or city; 
substantial edifices of brick, extensive fields, orchards, gardens, 
colleges, churches are seen. Broadcloths, silks, and all the refine- 
ments, luxuries, elegancies, frivolities, and fashions are in vogue. 
Thus wave after wave is rolling westward." 

The Geography of Western Settlement. — The physical 
geography of every country has a very great effect upon its 
of history. This was especially true of the settlement of our 
middle western states. The Appalachian mountain system 
was a great barrier across the path of the westward march of 
our people, but once this barrier was crossed the westward 
flowing rivers like the Ohio and the Tennessee were natural 




A Pioneer Family Migrating to the West 



GEOGRAPHY OF WESTERN SETTLEMENT 299 

roads which made it easy for the pioneers to penetrate far into 
the western country. You will notice that this mountain 
barrier extends from New England to northern Georgia. Every- 
where the frontiersmen were finding their way up the valleys 
and through the gaps of these mountains at about the same 
time. As the southern Appalachians are very much farther 
west than those to the north, the Virginians and Carolinians 
were laying the foundations of Kentucky and Tennessee at 
about the same time that the men of New England and the 
middle states were beginning to occupy central New York 
and western Pennsylvania. Kentucky and Tennessee were a 
great wedge of early settlement driven deep into the heart of 
the West. 

The country north of the Ohio River, the land which now 
makes up the southern part of the great states of Ohio, Indiana, 
and Illinois, was the second section of the Middle West to be Settlement 
settled. This region was occupied by people from the middle o^ t^^ North- 
states and a few from New England who made their way ovei- Territory 
the mountains to Pittsburgh and thence by the Ohio River 
and its tributaries or by roads through the woods to their 
destination. To this territory north of the Ohio there came 
also many Virginians and Kentuckians, especially from among 
the people in those states who did not own slaves and who 
wished to live in a land where slavery was forbidden by law. 

While the states which grew up in the Northwest Territory 

were being settled many of the more enterprising people of the 

South Atlantic states were making their way into the rich cotton Cotton lands 

lands which extend from South Carolina and Georgia to Texas. ^^ *^^ South 

occuoicd 
The Virginians could reach the Southwest by following the 

valleys of the upper Roanoke, the Holston, and the Tennessee 
rivers, or they could join the planters who were moving west 
from the Carolinas and Georgia and follow the easy roads to 
the West which ran south of the Appalachian mountains. The 
lower South had numerous rivers which led to the Gulf of 
Mexico and it was not difficult to make one's way by water 
along the Gulf coast. 

We have seen how the early settlers of Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee sent their produce down the Mississippi to market at First 

New Orleans. It was natural that these river traders should ^^^°ffj!i,„ 

1 • c 1 • 1 1 west or the 

hear glowmg reports of the tertile lands beyond the Mississippi. Mississippi 



300 THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE WEST 




Physical Map of the Eastern Half of the United States 



I 



THE JOXJRNEY TO THE FRONTIER 



301 



After we bought the Louisiana Territory in 1803 so many- 
Americans emigrated to New Orleans or settled upon the 
banks of the lower Mississippi and Red rivers that Louisiana, 
was admitted into the Union in 1812. During the great rush 
into the West which followed the War of 1812 so many people 
found then- way across the Mississippi into the lower valley of 
the Missouri River that this section was soon asking to be made 
a state. Many of the early settlers be>'ond the Mississippi 
came from Kentucky and ^■irginia. Daniel Boone, the famous 
frontiersman and Indian fighter in the early history of Ken- 




h 



A Flat Boat and Steamboats on a Western River 

tucky, spent his last j^ears as a pioneer upon the banks of 
the Missom-i. 

The country about the Great Lakes was the last region 
east of the Mississippi to be settled. The men of New England 
who made their way into the West through the Mohawk Valley Later 
were some years in occupying the good farming land in western develop- 
New York. When they reached Lake Erie they passed along ^g^Great" 
its southern shore into northern Ohio. The part of Ohio on Lakes 
the shore of Lake Erie is often called "the Western Reserve," 
because Connecticut had reserved a large part of it when she 
ceded her western land claim to the United States. After the 
steamboat appeared on the Great Lakes, pioneers from New 
York and New England began to go to Michigan, southern 
Illinois, and later Wisconsin, but these settlements in the coun- 
try on the western lakes did not begin to grow rapidly until 
about 1835. 

The Journey to the Frontier. — A trip from the Atlantic 
seaboard to the Middle West now means twenty-four hours Goin^ West 



302 



THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE WEST 



spent in comfort and pleasure upon a fast express train. But 
to our pioneer ancestors one hundred years ago such a journey 
was a serious undertaking, lasting many days and often 
attended with great hardships. Moreover, to "go West" in 
those days meant the brealdng of all the old home ties in the 
East. Those who started to seek new homes in Indiana or 
Mississippi knew that it was unlikely that they would ever 
again see the relatives and friends whom they left behind. 
Only the stout-hearted, the eager, and the ambitious dared to go. 
Some of the poorer emigrants to the West carried all their 




Going West One Hundred Years Ago 

worldly possessions in packs upon their backs or in little carts 
The journey which were drawn by hand. But most pioneer families prepared 
to the new £qj. ^j^g journey to their new western home by procuring a 
canvas-covered wagon into which they loaded clothing, bedding, 
a few dishes and cooking utensils, some needed tools, and 
provisions for the trip. This wagon was drawn by horses or 
mules, or sometimes by a yoke of oxen. The father or one of 
the sons drove the team. The mother and small children 
rode. Perhaps the larger boys and girls drove a few cattle 
behind the wagon. In this way they made fifteen or twenty 
miles a day. At night they stopped at a wayside tavern, or more 
frequently camped along the roadside near a spring or creek. 



THE JOURNEY TO THE FRONTIER 



303 



The family that moved West in this way was very Ukely 
to find company upon the road. In fact it was a common 
thing for a group of such famihes to join together for the The stream 
journey. During the great rush into the West after the War ^^ emigrants 
of 1812 the main highways leading to that section were covered 
by a stream of emigrants. A tollgate keeper in Pennsylvania 
reported that sixteen thousand people passed this gate bound 
west between March and December, 1817. The same year 
two hundred and sixty emigrant wagons were counted going 
by one tavern in western New York in nine days. A traveler 




A Pennsylvania Tollgate and Bridge 

in the South says that he fell in with crowds of emigrants 
bound for the cotton lands of Alabama. He declares that he 
counted two hundred and seven wagons, twenty-nine herds of 
cattle, twenty-seven droves of hogs, and more than three 
thousand eight hundred people. 

The following extracts from the diary of a Connecticut 
girl who traveled with her family to Ohio in 1810 will help us 
to realize what such a journey was like in those days. "Every Experiences 
toll gatherer and child that sees us inquires where we are going. — of » pioneer 
The bridge over the Delaware is elegant, I think. It is covered ^*^ 
and has sixteen windows each side. — It is amusing to see the 
variety of paintings on the inn-keeper's signs. — We are obliged 
to sleep every and any way at most of the inns now. I have 



304 THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE WEST 

learned to eat raw pork and to drink whiskey. Don't you 
tliink I shall do for a new country? — We have been nearly 
twenty miles today and I have been obhged to walk up hill, 
till we are all very tired. From what I have seen and heard, 
I think the state of Ohio will be well filled up before winter. 
Wagons without number every day go on. One went on 
containing forty people. We almost every day see them with 
eighteen or twenty, one stopped here tonight with twenty- 
seven. — We are over the sixth mountain and at an inn at the 
foot of it. This mountain is called worse than any of them, 
it is only six miles over. We have only come eight today and 
I have not been in the wagon." 

When the southern planter moved with many slaves to 
the cotton lands in Alabama or Mississippi it was necessary 
How the for him to take tools and work-animals with him in order to 
southern gg^ ^y^q slaves to work at once upon his new plantation. No 
moved West doubt the journey was a joyous occasion to the slaves, to whom 
for the time it meant a release from hard work. A traveler 
who met a pioneer planter moving into the West has given us 
this charming picture' of what he saw: "The cattle with their 
hundi"ed bells; the negroes with delight in their countenances, 
for their labors were suspended and their imaginations excited; 
the mistress and children strolling carelessly along in a gait 
that enables them to keep up with the slow-traveling carriage. 
Just before nightfall they come to a spring or a branch where 
there is water and wood. The pack of dogs set up a cheerful 
barking. The cattle lie down and ruminate. The team is 
unharness(Kl. The large wagons are covered so that the roof 
completely excludes the rain. The cooking utensils are brought 
out. The blacks prepare a supper which the toils of the day 
render delicious; and they talk over the adventures of the past 
day and prospects of the next." 

The Life of the Pioneer. — After a toilsome though interest- 
ing journey the members of the pioneer family at last reached 
Settling on the scene of their future home. If they were the first comers in 
forest land |j^g vicinity the unbroken forest was all that welcomed them. 
If other settlers had preceded them they were sure to be 
greeted with neighborly offers of help. In either case their 
situation was a lonely one. By day they were shut in by 
the surrounding woods and at night the stillness was only 



THE LIFE OF THE PIONEER 



305 



broken bj' the howl of the wolf and the mournful cry of the 
whippoorwill. 

But the newcomers were soon too busy to be homesick. 
Their inmuKiiate needs were shelter and food. Their first shelter 
was apt to be a rude shed called a "half -faced camp." Three The first 
sides of this camp were built of pol(\s and its roof was covered <^*™P 
with branches and bark. The fourth side was left open and a 
fire built in front of it. When Abraham Lincoln was a little 
boy he lived with his parents foi" a whole year in such a camp in 
Indiana. 

As soon as a temporary shelter for his family was built the The first crop 
pioneer began a little clearing in the forest in order to plant 
his first crop. 

"His echoing axe the settler swung 

Amid the sea-like soUtude, 
And rushing, thundering, down were flung 

The Titans of the wood." 



When a little patch had been cleared the ground was broken 
up, and corn and potatoes were planted among the stumps and 
logs. If the new home had 
not been located near a 
spring a well had to be dug. 
During the first few months 
the settlers depended upon 
hunting for most of their 
supply of food. Fortunately 
wild turkeys, deer, and 
bears were usually easy to 
find. But a steady diet of 
venison and bear's meat 
must have grown very tire- 
some, and you can imagine 
with what joy the children 
welcomed the first roasting 
ears of corn. 

As soon as the settler could cut the logs his neighbors 
helped him raise a substantial log house. The log houses of jj^^ j^ 
the Middle West were very much like those which had been house 
20 




A Half-faced Camp 



306 THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE WEST 

built on the frontier ever since colonial times. The tables, 
benches, and other furniture in them were mostly homemade. 
The garden seeds brought from the old honie in the East were 
planted near the house. If the settler was a thrifty and indus- 
trious man his new home soon began to justify the picture of 
it painted by one of our poets: 

"His roof adorned a lovely spot, 

'Mid the black logs green glowed the grain, 
And herbs and plants the woods knew not 
Throve in the sun and rain." 

After his house was built the settler undertook the heavy 
task of clearing his land of forest. He began by "girdling? 
Clearing the the trees. This was done by cutting a ring through the bark 
land around the lower part of the trunk deep enough to prevent the 

sap from rising. In a short time the girdled tree died. Grain 
could then be sown among the standing trunks. Later, when 
the dead trees were so dry that they would burn readily they 
were cut down. Some of the logs were split into rails to fence ■ 
the fields. Most of them, however, were rolled together into 
piles and burned. The settlers helped each other in these 
"log-rollings" which were often festive occasions. It took a 
lifetime to clear a large farm of heavy timber. When the 
settlers reached the prairie lands of Illinois and Missouri they 
escaped this laborious task. By simply breaking up the sod 
with a plow the prairie farmer could bring a large farm under 
cultivation in two or three years. 

But a prosperous farm anywhere in the forest-covered 

region of the Middle West was the result of the labor of many 

Growth of a years. It began with a little clearing and a rude cabin in the 

farm home in midst of the encircling forest. As time passed the clearing was 

^ ^^ enlarged, two or three small fields were fenced in, and a corn 

crib, a stable, and a larger log house were built. Perhaps an 

orchard was set out. Later still, after a sawmill was set up 

in the neighborhood, a small frame house and a barn were 

erected. In the meantime, field was slowly added to field as 

the forest was cut away. At last we see a fine farmhouse, a 

large barn, gardens, orchards, and far-reaching fields from 

which all the stumps have disappeared. 



THE LIFE OF THE PIONEER 



307 



The first pioneers in the region bordering the Gulf of 
Mexico Hved hke those of the Ohio Valley in log cabins in little 
clearings along the rivers. But when the cotton lands of the Develop- 
lower South began to attract prosperous, planters with money "lent of a 
and many slaves the southern frontier came to differ greatly plantation 
from the northern. The pioneer cotton planter bought a large 
tract of la,nd, often several thousand acres in extent. He 
moved to this land with his family carriage, his pack of hounds, 
and a long train of slaves. Some of the negroes who were 
carpenters and masons soon built a house for the master and 
cabins for the slaves. The possession of many laborers made it 
possible to clear the land quickly, and in a few years a great 
cotton plantation was developed. 

While the pioneers were clearing the land and developing 




Ciiwi. II .:( Dept. of Immigration, South Dakota 
A Modern Western Farm 



their farms and plantations, they were planting the other insti- 
tutions of a civilized community. From the first the western Local 



government 
set up 



settlers felt the need of establishing law and order. It was 
natural that they should set up local governments like those 
they had known in their old homes in the East. In those parts 
of the North where most of the settlers came from New England, 
the township became the more important unit of local govern- 
ment. In the South local affairs were managed by a county 
government patterned after that of Virginia and the Carolinas. 
In the middle region a mixed form of local government much 
like that of Pennsylvania came to prevail. 

The settlers of the West also brought with them the ideas 
about education and religion which they had cherished in their 
former homes. North of the Ohio River public schools were churches^ 
early established, but in the South they made their appearance established 



308 THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE WEST 

much more slowly. The earliest religious meetings in the Middle 
West were held by traveling ministers called "circuit riders." 
The camp meeting, a sort of combination of picnic and reli- 
gious service, was very popular during the early history of 
this section. In the course of time, as the population grew, 
all the leading religious denominations organized permanent 
churches. 

New States. — Five new states were added to the original 

thirteen before the War of 1812. Vermont was admitted into 

First states ^^^ Union in 1791, Kentucky in 1792, Tennessee in 1796, 

added to the Ohio in 1803, and Louisiana in 1812. The rapid settlement of 

Union ^^le West which began after the War of 1812 resulted in the 

formation of a new state each year for six years beginning with 

1816. The eighteen states which made up the Union when the 

war closed had grown to be twenty-four by 1821, just half the 

number that were in the Union a hundred years later. 

This rapid increase in the number of states in the Union 
was due to the marvelous growth of the Middle West at that 
Rapid growth time. This growth was especially marked in the old Northwest 
Middle West ^^ ^^rritory. When Ohio became a state in 1803 it contained about 
fifty thousand inhabitants. In 1820 its population was nearly 
six hundred thousand — more people than were then living in 
the old state of Massachusetts. The population of the Terri- 
tory of Indiana was twenty-eight thousand in 1810. Indiana 
became a state in 1816, and by 1820 it had nearly one hundred 
and fifty thousand inhabitants, while, farther west, Illinois was 
beginning to grow rapidly and was admitted to the Union in 
1818. 

When the first American pioneers started to go to Louisiana 
after its purchase from the French in 1803, some of them settled 
Rush into on the east side of the Mississippi River in the Territory of 
South^^'^ Mississippi. After General Jackson broke the power of the 
Creek Indians in 1813 there was, as we have seen, a great rush 
to occupy the cotton lands of the lower South. In 1817 Missis- 
sippi became a state. Its population doubled between 1810 
and 1820. Even more rapid was the growth of Alabama, which 
came into the Union two years later, in 1819. 

When the people who were crowding into the Territory of 
Missouri and Missouri sought its admission into the Union they were delayed 
Maine for a time by a great controversy over the question whether the 



THE RISING WESTERN CITIES 



309 



proposed state should be slave; or free. We shall hear more of 
this controversy presently when we study the history of slavery 
in our countr3^ Just at this time, Maine, which had been a part 
of Massachusetts, wanted to become a separate state. Massa- 
chusetts gave her consent and Maine was admitted as a free 
state in 1820. This made it easier to admit Missouri as a 
slave state in 1821. 

Nine of the eighteen states in the Union in 1815 were free 
states and nine were slave states. In admitting the new states Free states 
which were addcnl to the Union during the next six years it is ^^d slave 
evident that Congress was trying to mamtain a balance between 



ijfUiUfc.^-^.-iiU^^fe 





Cincinnati in 1802 



From an old print. 



the North and the South. The free state of Indiana in 1816 
was followed by the slave state of Mississippi in 1817. Free 
Illinois in 1818 was immediately ofTset by slave-holding Ala- 
bama in 1819. Maine in 1820 and Missouri in 1821 stiU main- 
tained the equilibrium between the sections. 

For years after 1821 the new states of the Middle West 
were filling up with settlers. It was fifteen years before another 
state was added to the Union. Then in 1836 Congress admitted Arkansas 
the slave state of Arkansas, and early in 1837 restored the j^^j^hiean 
balance between slavery and freedom by maldng the free state 
of Michigan. 

The Rising Western Cities. — While the pioneers were 
swarming into the new states in the Middle West, towns and 



310 



THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE WEST 



How a town cities were springing up all over that region as if by magic. 

began As soon as there was a considerable number of settlers in any 

locahty a store was apt to be opened at some convenient 
point. Soon a tavern made its appearance near the store. 
Presently a blacksmith shop, a sawmill, and possibly a grist- 
mill were set up. The people who were employed in these 
places naturally built their homes near by, and in this way a 



How some 
towns grew 
to be cities 




From Underwood t& Underwood, N . Y. 
Traffic on the Bie Rivers 
The river front at Louisville, Kentucky, one of the half dozen important cities on 
the Ohio. 

town began. Often a frontier town was named for a leading 
settler, as Zanesville or Vicksburg. 

Great numbers of these little frontier towns never grew 
to be more than villages. But if such a village were the natural 
market and trading center of a large farming district, and in 
addition if it were favorably situated upon a navigable river or 
a main traveled road, it soon grew into a large town with many 
stores, a bank, and a newspaper. By and by a railroad came 
to add to its trading facilities, and a factory was built 
to give employment to its surplus labor. The Mississippi 
Valley is dotted with hundreds of thriving httle cities which 
have grown up in this way. 

Because of their favorable situation for commerce some of 



THE RISING WESTERN CITIES 



311 



the western towns grew to be great cities. In the early history Importance 
of the West, New Orleans was the natural market of the whole °^ New 
Mississippi Valley. The pork, flour, and tobacco of the states *-*'"^®^°^ 
drained by the upper Mississippi and its tributaries, as well as 
the sugar and cotton of Louisiana and Mississippi, came to 
New Orleans and were carried thence by ocean-going ships to 
the markets of the world. After the settlement of Alabama, 
Mobile grew to be a cotton market second only to New Orleans. 
After the steamboat appeared on the western rivers New 
Orleans not only bought 
the produce of the interior, 
but began to send the 
western settlers the im- 
ported goods which they 
needed. This fact helped 
to make the merchants of 
the eastern cities more 
eager for the opening of 
canals and railroads to 
the West. 

Pittsburgh, Cincin- 
nati, Louisville, and St. 
Louis were the great river 
ports of the early West. 
Pittsburgh commanded 
the entrance to the great- 
est waterway to the west- 
ern country, and early 
began to make the iron 
wares which that country 
demanded. Cincinnati was the commercial center of a vast The great 
and fertile farming region in Kentucky and Ohio. It built a ^^^^ P^'"*^ 
large part of the river steamboats and became the first great 
pork packing city in the West. Louisville owes its beginning 
to the falls in the Ohio River which made it necessary to trans- 
fer flatboat cargoes at this point in times of low water. It 
became the great export center for the tobacco of Kentucky. 
St. Louis was the natural trading point for the settlers of 
Missouri and southern Illinois. It was also for many years a 
great fur market to which came the rich peltries of the far West. 




From U/ulrnronr! ^ T^nrl/rimor?. N. Y. 
Loading Iron Ore-ships at Cleveland 



312 



THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE WEST 



Great Lakes 



Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago owe 
their early growth to their favorable situation upon the Great 
Important Lakes. Buffalo was the natural starting point for steamboat 
cities^ on^ the traffic upon these inland seas. The opening of the Erie canal 
contributed wonderfully to its importance. Cleveland began 
to grow when a canal connected its harbor with the interior of 
Oliio and made it the market for the northern part of that 
state. Nature made Detroit and Milwaukee the great lake ports 
of their respective states. Chicago owes its preeminence to its 
superb location near the head of Lake Michigan, at the natural 



Manufac- 
turing 
centers 




Chicago in 1832 



From an old print. 



meeting place of all the great railroads of the upper Mississippi 
Valley. Chicago was founded later than most of the other 
cities of the Middle West, but it has far outstripped them all. 

All the great river and lake ports which have just been 
mentioned owe their early growth to their natural advantages 
for trade. But after the factory system of manufacturing was 
introduced into the Middle West, and when that section was 
covered with a network of railroads, they all became great 
manufacturing centers. Their later development has been 
industrial quite as much as commercial. 

The Influence of the West.— The War of 1812 quickened 
the spirit of nationality in our country. The growth of this 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE WEST 



313 



spirit was further promoted by the rapid settlement of the 
West which followed that war. The people of the older states 
in the East had a keen sense of local pride and of state patriot- 
ism. The movement into the West brought together people 
from the different states and sections of the country and made 
them acquainted with one another. It helped to break down 
their odd local prejudices and to make them realize, as never 
before, that they were all citizens of a common country. The 
pioneers of the West rapidly came to feel that they were no 
longer New Englanders or 
Virginians but Americans. 

The settlement of the 
West made our country 
more truly democratic. I n 
the states upon the Atlan- 
tic seaboard people 
differed greatly in wealth 
and in social position. 
But on the frontier, men 
were judged by what they 
could do and not by their 
money or their position. 
Where all men were poor 
and all worked for a liv- 
ing, as they did on the 
frontier, each man felt 
himself the equal of every 
other man. With this 
feeling of equality in his 
heart the pioneer believed 
that every man ought to vote and that the majority ought 
to rule. These beliefs are the basis of democratic government. 
Presently the democratic ideals of the West began to influ- 
ence the older states in the East. In this way the rising West 
helped to make the whole nation more democratic. 

Life in a new country had a marked effect upon the man- 
ners and customs of the settlers. The life of the pioneer was 
one of great privation and incessant toil. He had left behind 
him most of the civilizing and refining influences of his eastern 
home — its schools, its churches, arid its books. It is no wonder 



The West 
helped to 
make 
Americans 




Frontier life 
made men 
democratic 



© Keystone View Co., Meadville, Pa. 
A Glimpse of Modern Chicago 



It also made 
them brave 
and self- 
reliant 



314 THE RISE OF THE MIDDLE WEST 

that the frontiersman grew careless in dress and speech and 
sometimes free and easy or even rude in manner. But life in 
the New West gave men more than it took from themi It 
taught them to think and act for themselves. It made them 
frank, neighborly, and hospitable. It gave them resourceful- 
ness, self-reliance, and a broader outlook. In a word, it helped 
to develop the finest qualities of the American people. 

The rise of the Middle West in the period between 1815 
and 1840 brought our country face to face with several new 
New and difficult questions. Among these were the crying need for 
ques ions ^j^^gj-nal improvements, the necessity of making the government 
more truly representative of the people, and, most important 
of all, the extension of slavery into the western lands. We must 
next turn our attention to the efforts of our people to solve these 
problems and others which were pressing upon them. 

REFERENCES. 

Turner, Rise of the New West; Mathews, The Expansion of New 
England; Sparks, The Expansion of the American People; Babcock, Rise 
of American Nationality; McMaster, History of the People of the United 
States, Vols. IV and V; The Histories of the Western States, especially 
Phelan, Tennessee; Shaler, Kentucky; King, Ohio; Dunn, Indiana; 
Carr, Missouri; Cooley, Michigan. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. How Geography Influenced the Spread of Population in the Missis- 
sippi Valley. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, 
150-176. 

2. The Rush into the West. McMaster, History of the People of 
the United States, IV, 381-389. 

3. Journeying to the Ohio Country. Sparks, Expansion of the Ameri- 
can People, 135-148. 

4. A Voyage down the Ohio. Hart, American History told by Con- 
temporaries, III, 459-463. 

5. Life on the Frontier. McMaster, History of the People of the 
United States, V, 152-156. 

6. Pioneer Life in Indiana When Lincoln was a Boy. Nicolay and 
Hay, Abraham Lincoln, I, 38-42. 

7. Pioneer Life in the Ohio Valley. Sparks, The Expansion of the 
American People, 149-158. 

8. The People of the Wood?. Hart, American History Told by Con- 
temporaries, 1 11^ 463-467 • 



REFERENCES 315 

9. Local Government in the West. Fiske, Civil Government in the 
United States, 89-95. 

10. Western Trade. Turner, The Rise of the New West, 96-106. 

11. The Development of the West. Turner, The Rise of the New West, 
84-95. 

12. The Evolution of the American Frontier. Sparks, The Expansion 
of the American People, 238-248. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Street, The Settler; Gallagher, The Mothers of the West. 

Novels: Eggleston, Roxy; The Graysons; The Hoosier Schoolmaster; 
The Circuit Rider; Kirkland, Zury; The McVeys; Parrish, When Wilder- 
ness Was King; Altsheler, Wilderness Trail; Ivirkman, The Romance of 
Gilbert Holmes; Gale and Wheeler, A Knight of the Wilderness; Howells, 
Recollections of Life in Ohio. 

$fii Biographies: Clay, Henry Clay; Roosevelt, Thomas H. Benton; 
Meigs, Life of Thomas H. Benton; Lewis, When Men Grew Tall, or the 
Story of Andrew Jackson. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Show why the War of 1812 influenced the settlement of the West. 
' Trace upon a map the routes by which settlers from the East reached the 

Middle West. 

2. Judging by what followed the close of the long Napoleonic War in 
1815, are European immigrants likely to come to America in large numbers 
after the World's War which began in 1914? 

3. Is a river or a mountain range the better natural boundary between 
two countries? Why? What are the chief railroads crossing the Appa- 
lachian mountain system now? What determined their routes? 

4. In 1816 a New Jersey farmer moved with his family to Indiana. 
How did this family travel to their new home? What did they take with 
them? What did they do during their first year on the frontier? 

5. Contrast pioneer life in Indiana and in Mississippi. Contrast 
pioneer life in a forest country and on the prairie. What are the special 
advantages of each? What influence did Ufe on the frontier have upon 
the pioneers? Does the hfe of the pioneer appeal to you? Why? 

6. Point out upon the map all the new states named in this chapter. 
Why did Congress try to maintain a balance between the free and the 
slave states in admitting new states? 

7. Is New Orleans as important a city now as it was one hundred 
years ago? Why? What geographical facts determine the location of 
your home city or of the city nearest your home? 



CHAPTER XVI 

The Times of Andrew Jackson 

The Beginning of New Political Parties. — In an earlier 
chapter we saw how our first political pai'tics, the Federalist 

Review and the Republican, grew up while Washington was president. 

The Federalists governed the country from 1789 to 1801. 
The Republicans triumphed in the election of 1800, and for 
the next twenty-four years their three great leaders from 
Virginia, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, held the presidential 
office. During this long period of Republican rule the Feder- 
alist party steadily declined, and not long after the War of 
1812, which it opposed, it ceased to exist. Because of this 
cessation of party strife, Monroe's administration is often called 
the "Era of Good Feehng." 

The first five presidents of our country had all taken an 
active part in the Revolution. During the^Era of Good Feeling" 

New political !^ i^^w group of younger political leaders came upon the scene. 

leaders John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John C. 

Calhoun, William H. Crawford, and Andrew Jackson were the 
most conspicuous leaders of this group of younger statesmen. 
Adams, tlie son of the second president, had been minister to 
several foreign countries and was the secretary of state in 
Monroe's cabinet. Webster, the most famous orator in our 
history, was just entering Congress from Massachusetts. Henry 
Clay of Kentucky was the Speaker of the House of Representa- 
tives most of the time from 1811 to 1825. Calhoun of South 
Carolina, Monroe's secretary of war, w^s one of the young 
"war hawks" who with Clay at their head had brought on the 
War of 1812. Crawford, a shrewd politician from Georgia, 
was the secretary of the treasury. Andrew Jackson of Tennes- 
see was the hero of the battle of New Orleans. Before Presi- 
dent Monroe's second term ended the keen feeling of nationality 
which swept over the country as a result of the War of 1812 
was no longer quite so ardent as it had been. Men were begin- 
ning to think once moi'e of the special interests of their states or 
sections. While all the new leaders loved the Union, each of 

316 



BEGINNING OF NEW POLITICAL PARTIES 317 



them was a champion of his own section of the countrj^ Adams 
and Webster spoke for the North, and especially for New 
England. Calhoun and Crawford upheld the rights of the 
slave-holding South. Clay and Jackson were true representa- 
tives of the rising West. 

The "Era of Good Feeling" soon became a time of very 
hard feeling in politics. Each of the new leaders named in the 
last paragraph cherished an aml^tion Uj be president, and when The election 
the election of 1824 of 1824 

drew near, all of them 
except Webster be- 
came candidates for 
the office. Presently 
Calhoun withdrew, 
content for the time 
with the vice-pres- 
idency. The other 
four remained in the 
race to the end. As 
none of them had a 
majority of the elec- 
toral vote, the election 
of a president was 
thrown into the House 
of Representatives for 
the second time in our 
history. The Con- 
stitution limits the 
house in its choice to 
the three candidates 
receiving the largest 

number of electoral votes. Clay was fourth on the list and so 
could not be chosen. Jackson had received the largest number 
of electoral votes, but through Clay's influence the house 
elected Adams. 

Jackson and his friends at once charged that there had been 
a corrupt bargain between Adams and Clay. Thej^ said that 
Clay had induced his friends in the House of Representatives Jackson men 
to vote for Adams because Adams had promised to appoint ^°^ Adams 
him secretary of state. There was no truth in this charge' 




John Quincy Adams 



318 



THE TIMES OF ANDREW JACKSON 



Democrats 
and Whigs 



The 

Jacksonian 

period 



but many people believed it, especially after Adams gave Clay 
the first place in his cabinet. Jackson's friends declared that 
because their leader had the largest number of electoral votes 
he was the real choice of the country. While all the voters 
professed to be Republicans during Adams' administration they 
were really divided into two factions, the Jackson men and the 
Adams men. The followers of Jackson were strong enough in 
Congress to prevent the passage of nearly all the measures that 
Adams favored. The Adams men were handicapped by the 
personality of their leader. Adams was a very able, honest, 
and intensely patriotic man of wide experience in governmental 
affairs, but he was cold and distant in manner and utterly 
lacked the power to arouse enthusiasm or to win friends. 

In 1828 Adams and Jackson were again rivals for the 
presidency and this time Jackson won by a large majority. 
During Jackson's eight years in the White House the two new 
parties were fully organized. At first the supporters of Jackson 
called themselves Democratic-Republicans, a name that had 
frequently been applied to the Jeffersonian Republicans ever 
since that party began. Presently the word Republican fell 
into disuse, and the friends of Jackson were called the Demo- 
crats. This was the beginning of the Democratic party which 
still exists. After 1828 Henry Clay became the real leader of 
the Adams men, who began to call themselves National Repub- 
licans. Before the close of Jackson's administration the 
National Republicans took the name of Whigs. The Whig 
party favored a protective tariff, internal improvements at 
national expense, and a national bank, and believed in a 
broader construction of the Constitution than the Democrats 
did. The Democrats opposed all these measures. The Demo- 
crats and the Whigs were our two great political parties for 
twenty-five years after Jackson became president. 

Andrew Jackson. — Andrew Jackson was president of the 
United States from 1829 to 1837, but he so completely domi- 
nated the country from 1825 until 1841 that this time is often 
called the Jacksonian period of our history. 

Jackson was born on the western border of the Carolinas 
in 1767. His parents were Irish emigrants who had recently 
settled in that region. Though only a boy he saw service in 
the Revolutionary War and was for a short time a prisoner 



ANDREW JACKSON 



319 



in the hands of the British. After the war he studied law, and Jackson, the 
in 1788 he settled on the western frontier at Nashville, Tennes- ^^^^^^^^^^^ 
see. During a large part of his life he lived on his plantation, 
the "Hermitage," near Nashville. Jackson was a born leader 
of men and soon won prominence in politics and as an Indian 
fighter. He was the 
first representative of 
Tennessee in the na- 
tional House of Repre- 
sentatives, served for 
a short time in the 
United States Senate, 
and was later elected 
chief justice of the 
Supreme Court of his 
state. Jackson found 
his great opportunity 
as a general in the 
War of 1812. In a 
brilliant campaign he 
broke the power of the 
Creek Indians, and at 
the battle of New 
Orleans he inflicted an 
overwhelming defeat 
upon the British. His 
victory at New Or- 
leans made Jackson 

the idol of the country and in the end won him the presidency. 
This tall, slender soldier with his mass of gray hair and his 
flashing eyes was one of the most remarkable men in our his- 
tory. When on the march against the Indians Jackson could "Old 
endure so much hardship that his soldiers said he was "tough Hickory" 
as hickory," and the nickname "Old Hickory" clung to him 
all the rest of his life. In times of danger he had the cool head, 
the quick eye, and the stout heart of the frontiersman. He was 
a man of tremendous energy, hot temper, and iron will. Jack- 
son was sometimes hasty in judgment and never had any 
patience with men who did not agree with him. He was 
obstinate in the extreme. There was much truth in the words 




Andrew Jackson 



320 



THE TIMES OF ANDREW JACKSON 



which a humorous writer of the time puts in his mouth, "It 
has always bin my way, when I git a notion, to stick to it till 
it dies a natural death ; and the more folks talk agin my notions, 
the more 1 stick to 'em." With all his faults, and he had many 
of them, Jackson was honest, truthful, kind, and courteous 




The "Hermitage" 
Home of Andrew Jackson near Nashville, Tennessee 



A champion 
of the com- 
mon people 



when he chose to be, and he loved and served his country with 
a deep and abiding passion. He was our greatest president 
between Jefferson and Lincoln. 

Love of the Union and belief in the right of the people to 
rule had been growing in the hearts of our countrymen ever 
since the adoption of the Constitution. We have called these 
feelings nationality and democracy. The influence of Jackson 
did much to promote and unite them. When he became presi- 
dent the clashing interests of the North and the South were 
already beginning to check the growth of a national "spirit. 
Jackson was devoted to the Union and did all in his power to 
preserve and strengthen it. All our earlier presidents had wide 
knowledge and thorough training in public affairs. Jackson 
knew little of books and was untrained except as a soldier. But 
he knew the common people from whom he sprang, and he 



THE SPOILS SYSTEM 



321 



believed in their right and fitness to govern themselves. We 
have &een why the pioneers of the new West were more demo- 
cratic than the people who remained in the older sections of 
the country. Jackson, our first president from the West, was 
a true son of the frontier in this respect and one of the stoutest 
champions of the rights of the common people in all our history. 
The people loved him 
and thronged to Wash- 
ington to see him in- 
augurated. Daniel 
Webster wrote at the 
time: "I never saw 
such a crowd before. 
Persons have come 
hundreds of miles to 
see General Jackson 
and they really seem 
to think that the 
country is rescued 
from some dreadful 
danger. At the White 
House the crowds up- 
set the pails of punch, 
broke the glasses, and 
stood with their mud- 
dy boots in the satin- 
covered chairs to see 
the people's presi- 
dent." 

The Spoils System. — There were many office-seekers in 
the great crowd which came to Washington to see General 
Jackson inaugurated. They wanted the new president to dis- The hope of 
miss the postmasters and other office-holders under the national t^^^ office- 
government who had not voted for him, and to give them the 
places thus made vacant. They knew that the earlier presi- 
dents had selected honest and capable men for office, and had 
kept them in their places as long as they did their work well. 
But they also knew that for years it had been the practice in 
New York, Pennsylvania, and some of the other states for the 
victors in a state election to replace all the office-holdei's of the 
21 




Daniel Webster 



seekers 



322 THE TIMES OF ANDREW JACKSON 

opposite party with their own poHtical friends. They hoped 
that Jackson would punish his opponents antl reward his friends 
in the same way, and they were not (hsappointed. 

Jackson believed that some of the men who had held office 

under Adams were dishonest. He knew that many of them had 

Jackson in- opposed him, and he never could quite understand how anyone 

troduces the who opposed him could be a true patriot. H(^ attached little 

system value to training and experience, and thought that if men 

were only honest, one of them could perform the duties of an 

office quite as well as another. Jackson removed great numbers 

of office-holders and filled their places with his political followers. 

This practice thus first introduced into the federal government 

came to be called the spoils system from the words of a New 

York politician who defended it by saying, ''We see nothing 

wrong in the principle that to the victors belong the spoils of 

the enemy." 

The introduction of the unwise and harmful spoils system 
into our national life is a dark blot upon the record of President 
The evils of Jackson. It is a practice for which no good thing can be said, 
the spoils i^ ig unbusinesslike and lacking in good sense. No banker or 
^ merchant would think of discharging his experienced and 

efficient clerks to make places for a set of new and untried men 
whose political opinions he liked better, and it is just as foolish 
for the government of a city, state, or nation to do so. More- 
over, the spoils system has done more than anything else to 
make our politics corrupt and dishonest. Men are tempted to 
be unfair or to cheat in elections because they hope to gain or 
to keep the spoils of office in this way. Of late years the evils 
of the spoils system in our national government have been 
greatly lessened by requiring office-seekers to take competitive 
examinations before their appointment, and by keeping officers 
in their positions as long as they are efficient. This reform of 
the civil service, as it is called, is still greatly needed in many 
of our states and cities. 

The spoils system was not the only new political practice 

introduced during Jackson's administration. A new and more 

The democratic method of nominating candidates for the presidency 

beginning came into use in 1832. Hitherto the candidates of each party 

conv^enthms ^'^*^^ ^^^e^ named by the members of that party in Congress at 

a meeting called a Congressional Caucus or by the state legisla- 



THE TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION 



323 



tures. Now the parties began to hold national conventions 
to which each state sent delegates. Henceforth the national 
convention of each party drew up a statement of its principles, 
called its platform, and nominated its candidates for president 
and vice-prcsidcnl. 

The Tariff and Nullification.— After the War of 1812, as 
we have already noted, Ihe United States began to protect its 




© Internntional Film Service 
The Republican National Convention of 1920 in Session at Chicago 



infant manufacturing industries against the competition of 
foreigners by a series of tariff acts, each higher than the pre- The pro- 
ceding one. At that time nearly all the people in the South tective tariff 
were farmers and planters, and a protective tariff made them the^South^ 
pay more for the tools, clothing, and other manufactured goods 
which they needed. At first some southern men hoped that 
the tariff might encourage manufacturing in their section of the 
country, but they soon found out that slave la])or could not be 
employed profitably in factories. Because of these conditions 
the southern people felt that the policy of protection was very 
unfair to them and this feeling soon led them to oppose it bitterly. 



324 



THE TIMES OF ANDREW JACKSON 



Calhoun, the 
leader of the 
South 



The theory of 
nullification 



Jackson 
defends the 
Union 



Webster 
expounds the 
QQQstitution 



John C. Calhoun of South CaroUna became the leader of 
the South in its fight against a protective tariff policy. Calhoun 
was a statesman of great ability and high character, and one 
of the most convincing debaters in our history. He had favored 
the protective tariff act of 1816 because he was then eager to 
strengthen the national spirit which had been quickened by the 
War of 1812. But when he realized that the high tariff laws 
did not promote manufacturing in his own section, and 
that they even put a l)urden upon the planters of his own state, 
Calhoun opposed them with all his might. 

After the "tariff of abominations" was passed in 1828 
Calhoun advanced the argument that Congress had been given 
no right in the Constitution to lay a tax for the benefit of the 
manufacturers. He said further that the Constitution was 
made by the states, and that if Congress passed any law not 
authorized by the Constitution, any state could declare it un- 
constitutional and prevent its enforcement within the borders 
of that state. This theory that a state could declare an act of 
Congress null and void on the ground that it violates the 
Constitution was called nullification. Much the same view 
had been expressed thirty years earlier in the Kentucky and 
Virginia resolutions. The doctrine of nullification was very 
dangerous, for if any state should attempt to carry it out 
it might lead to civil war or to the breaking up of the Union. 

At first there was no attempt to act upon Calhoun's theory, 
but for the next three or four years nullification was much talked 
about and the idea became very popular in South Carolina. 
During this period of debate the Union found two stout defend- 
ers against the state rights men in President Jackson and 
Daniel Webster. In 1830, at a banquet to celebrate Jefferson's 
birthday several men spoke in approval of nullification. When 
President Jackson was introduced he gave the toast, "Our 
Federal Union; it must be preserved." This was a plain warn- 
ing to the nullifiers what to expect from a president who was 
well known to be as good as his word. 

The same year Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina elo- 
quently explained and defended the idea of nullification in 
the Senate. Webster replied to Hayne in one of the greatest 
speeches in our history. In burning words that had a deep and 
abiding influence throughout the North he declared that the peo- 



1 



THE TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION 



325 



pie, not the states, made the Constitution; that it is the supreme 
law of the land ; and that no authority except the Supreme Court 
of the United States has any right to declare an act of Congress 
unconstitutional. Webster closed with a thrilling appeal for 
"Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" 

When Congress passed a new tariff law in 1832 which South 
seemed to make protection the settled policy of the country numfie^the 
South Carolina hesitated no longer. A convention in that sta,te tariff laws 




Webster Replying to Hayne 



o'd print. 



promptly declared the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 to be "null 
and void, and no law, nor binding upon this state, its officers 
or citizens." South Carolina also threatened to withdraw 
from the Union if any attempt were made to enforce the laws 
which she had nullified. 

President Jackson warned the people of South Carolina 
that "the laws of the United States must be executed," and 
said, "If force should be necessary, I will have fort}' thousand Jackson's 
men in South Carolina to put down resistance and enforce the attitude 
law." When a member of Congress from South Carolina asked 



326 



THE TIMES OF ANDREW JACKSON 



Clay's 
compromise 



the president if he had any message for the people of that state, 
Jackson said, "Please say to iny friends in your state that if a 
single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws 
of the United States, I will hang the first man I lay my hands 
on, engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I 
can reach." 

South Carolina prepared to resist the collection of the 
duties, and the country stood upon the verge of civil war. 
But before either side had struck a blow Henry Clay came 
forward as a peacemaker. He proposed a compromise tariff 
law by which the rates of duty were to be reduced gradually 
for the next nine years. Congress passed Clay's compromise, 
South Carolina accepted it, and thus the threatened danger 
was averted. But this compromise only postponed the inevi- 
table conflict between the state rights men who believed in 
imllification and those who held with Jackson and Webster 
that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. 

Jackson's Attack upon the Bank of the United States. — 
At the same time that Jackson was fighting the idea of nulli- 
fication he was attacking ihe Bank of the United States. You 
will recall that Hamilton ]ii-()):)osed a national bank, which was 
chartered in 1791 for twenty years, and that a second national 
l)ank was set up in 1816. The second Bank of the United 
States, like the first, received the cash on hand of the gov- 
ernment on deposit and issued bank notes which the people 
used as paper money. At this time there were a great many 
other banks whose notes circulated as money. They were 
called state banks because they were given the right to do a 
banking business by the states in which they were located. 
The state banks were jealous of the Bank of the United States 
because they thought that it was trying to get all the business 
away from them. Jackson shared in this dishke of the big 
and powerful national bank. He feared that it would interfere 
in politics and possibly control the governmcnit. He had long 
heard many p(H)ple in th(^ West and South call the Bank of the 
United States a monopoly, and he hated all monopolies. 
Jackson Jackson began to talk against the bank as soon as he 

attacks the b(>('ame pr(>sident. He knew that its charter expired in 1836, 
United*' ^ '^"^^ ^''' wanted to prevent it from getting another. In 1832 
States Congress passed a bill renewing the bank's charter. Jackson 



Rival banks 



THE PANIC OF 1837 327 

vetoed this bill in a message in which he called the Bank of the 
United States ''an unnecessaiy, useless, expensive, un-American 
monopoly." This veto made the bank question the leading 
issue in the ek^ction of 1832 which was just coming on. The 
foes of the bank rallied around Jackson, who was renominated 
for the presidency by the Democrats. Henry Clay, the most 
ardent champion of the bank in Congress, was the candidate 
of its friends who were soon to be called the Whigs. Jackson 
won by a large majority. There was no longer any hope that 
the bank could get its charter renewed before it expired in 1836. 

President Jackson was not content with his victory over 
the national bank in the election of 1832. He was a man of 
the most intense likes and dislikes, and by this time his wrath The removal 
against the bank was at white heat. He naturally felt that his o^ t^^ 
reele(^tion meant that^ the people agreed with him. He ordered 
the secretary of the treasury to stop putting the money of the 
United States in the national bank and to deposit it in various 
state banks. This removal of the deposits seriously injured 
the national bank and gave some of the state banks a great 
deal more mon(^y with which to do business. The Senate 
thought that the president had no right to remove the govern- 
ment's money from the national bank and censured him for 
his action. The state banks in which the money of the United 
States was deposited were called "pet banks" because they "Pet banks" 
enjoyed the special favor of the administration. 

The Panic of 1837. — The country seemed very prosperous 
during Jackson's second term. Men were digging canals, build- 
ing railroads and factories, and buying public land in the hope A time of 
of selling it at higher prices. Much of this new business was wild specu- 
done with borrowed money. When ' the government money 
was deposited in the "pet banks" they loaned it freely to their 
customers. It was easier than ever to borrow money, arid men 
were tempted to risk it in new enterprises. Banking seemed 
to be a very prosperous Imsiness, and new state banks, often 
with very little capital, sprang up all over the West. Because 
some of these banks were reckless in issuing and lending their 
notes, which were used as paper money, they were called 
"wild cat" banks. All these circumstances tended to make men 
speculate wildly in the hope of getting rich quickly. Many 
people were heavily in debt. If anything should happen to 



328 



THE TIMES OF ANDREW JACKSON 



The causes 
of the panic 



Martin Van 
Buren 



make it necessary for the banks to redeem their notes and the 
people to pay their debts serious trouble was sure to come. 

The trouble came early in 1837, in the form of the most 
disastrous financial panic that our country has ever known. 
Unwise banking and wild speculation were the real causes of 
this panic, but an action of Jackson's during the last year of 
his administration helped to bring it on. The United States 
was selling enormous quantities of the public land at this time. 

The income of the 
government from this 
source alone jumped 
from five million dol- 
lars in 1834 to nearly 
twenty-five millions 
in 1836. Much of this 
land was paid for with 
the notes of ' ' wild cat " 
banks. Jackson be- 
gan to fear that these 
banks' might not be 
able to redeem their 
notes, so in 1836 he 
issued an order called 
the specie circular 
which du'ected that 
the public lands must 
be paid for in gold and 
silver. Wlien the peo- 
ple realized that the 
government was los- 
ing faith in the bank 
notes they lost confidence too, and floods of these notes began 
to pour into the banks to be exchanged for gold and silver. Many 
of the state banks were unable to redeem their notes in coin and 
•were forced to close their doors. Under these circumstances 
men who could not pay their debts were soon driven into 
bankruptcy, and presently the business of the country was 
almost paralyzed. 

The causes of the panic of 1837 developed while Jackson 
was president, but as the crash did not come until after he left 




Martin Van Buren 



THE PANIC OF 1837 



329 



The effects 
of the panic 



the White House, Van Buien, his successor, had to bear most 
of the blame. Martin Van Buren was a shrewd New York 
pohtician, whose enemies often called him the "Little Magi- 
cian" because of his cunning political tricks. He was a great 
favorite with Jackson who forced the Democrats to make him 
their candidate for the presidency in 1836. The Whigs made no 
regular nomination for that election but divided their votes 
among General Harrison, Webster, and two other candidates. 
VanBuren was easily elect- 
ed and he annoimced that 
he would continue the pol- 
icies of President Jackson. 

The effects of the 
panic of 1837, which came 
at the beginning of Van 
Buren's term of office, 
were severe and long con- 
tinued. Many bankers and 
merchants failed , mines 
and factories were shut 
down, and thousands of 
men were thrown out of 
work. For some j^ears 
many of our people found 
it diiticult to make a liv- 
ing. The people blamed 
the government for what 
was largely the result of 
their own extravagance 
and reckless speculation. 

The hard times continued until the peopl(>, by their economy, 
industry, and thrift, gradually overcame the evil effects of the 
panic. The Wliigs wanted to reestablish a national bank, but 
VanBuren successfully opposed them and in 1840 persuaded 
Congress to set up an independent treasury system under which 
the government keeps its cash on hand in its own vaults. 

A prolonged period of hard times in our country is very apt 
to be blamed upon the political party in power at the time. '^^^. "^^S 
This was especially true during Van Bui'en's administration, cider" cam- 
and the effect of it was seen in the election of 1840. In that paign of 1840 




Cartoon of the Log Cabin and Hard Cider 

Campaign 



330 



THE TIMES OF ANDREW JACKSON 



Government 
by the people 
gains ground 
in Europe 



Signs of 
growing 
democracy 
at home 



year the Democrats renominated Van Buren, and the Whigs, 
passing over their great leader, Henry Clay, named General 
William Henry Harrison, the old Indian fighter at Tippecanoe 
and hero of the War of 1812 for president, and John Tyler of 
Virginia for vice-president. The Democrats said that Harrison 
was an ignorant old frontiersman who would be more at home 
in a log cabin drinking hard cider than he would in the White 
House. The Whigs at once took advantage of this slur upon 
their candidate. At their meetings log cabins were built, much 
hard cider was drunk, and campaign songs in honor of "Old 
Tip " were sung. The Whig enthusiasm swept everything before 
it, and Harrison was chosen by a large majority of the electoral 
vote. On March 4, 1841, the Jacksonian period of our history 
came to an end, and the Whigs for the first time took charge 
of our national affairs. 

The Rising Tide of Democracy. — The right of the people 
to govern themselves was I'apidly gaining ground in both 
Europe and America when Jackson was president. In 1829 
the Greeks won their independence from the Turks who had 
oppressed them for centuries. In 1830 the French overthrew 
the old Bourbon line of kings, which had been restored in their 
country when Napoleon fell, and set up a more liberal monarch. 
In 1832 a great reform bill was passed in England, which gave 
the right to vote to many men who had not before possessed 
it and made the English parliament much more truly represen- 
tative of the English people than it had been in the days of the 
Revolution. Democracy was in the air everywhere. 

The rising tide of democracy in our own country first swept 
away the numerous restrictions which had formerly kept many 
men from having any voice in the government. When Jefferson 
became president in 1801 some of the states still retained 
religious tests for office-holding, and in many of them a man 
could not vote unless he possessed a certain amount of property. 
One by one as the country grew more democratic in feeling the 
states abolished thes(^ restrictions. By 1840 all religious quali- 
fications were gone and in all but a few of the states every white 
man who was twenty-one years old could vote. 

While the right to vote was being extended changes were 
being made in the gover'nments of the states in order to make 
them more responsive to the will of the people. In our early 



A PERIOD OF PROGRESS 331 

history only a few officers were elected by popular vote. The Popular 
iudges, most of the state officers, and many county and city changes in 

fc • 1 • ^ J I VI I u +1 state govern- 

omcials were nppomted hy tlie governor or chosen by the ment 

legislature. The growing democratic feeling in the country 
during the first half of the nineteenth century caused many 
of the states to make new gtate constitutions, or amend their 
old ones, in order to provide for the election of nearly all 
these officers by a direct vote of the people as they arc chosen 
at the present time. 

As the state governments thus became more democratic 
they began to change the laws in the interest of humanity and 
justice. The old cruel punishments such as standing in the The states 
pillory or sitting in the stocks were abolished, the whipping pass just and 
post disappeared in nearly all the states, and imprisonment 
for debt was stopped. Sanitary prisons were built to take the 
place of the filthy dungeons in which criminals were kept in 
the eighteenth century. More thought was given to the care 
of the poor and the afflicted. Well-kept poorhouses, schools 
for the deaf and dumb and for the blind, and public asylums 
for the insane began to appear. Laws were passed to divide 
inheritances ecjually among all the children inst(^ad of giving 
the eldest son a special share as had been done formerly. A 
few of the states began to fix the hours of labor by law. These 
democratic changes came more rapidly in the new states of 
the West than in the older and more conservative East. 

A Period of Progress. — While our- country was thus deeply 
moved by new dem(jcratic impulses during the times of Andrew 
Jackson it was developing rapidly along many other lines. Our A time of 
population was ten millions in 1820, nearly thirteen millions in rapid growth 
1830, and seventeen millions in 1840. The bulk of our people 
still lived in the country but the young manufa(;turing cities 
were growing very fast. Settlers were pouring into the new 
states in the West by hundreds of thousands. The toil of our 
farmers was rewarded with bountiful crops. An enormous inland 
commerce was springing up l)etween the different sections of 
the country. The last dollar of the national del)t was paid off in 
1835, and during the last two years of Jackson's administration 
the country was out of debt for the only time in its history. 

Meanwhile the Indians were driven steadily westward by 
the oncoming wave of settkniient. In 1832 the frontiersmen 



332 



THE TIMES OF ANDREW JACKSON 



Progress in 
education 



Our dealings seized the land of the Indians in northern Illinois. Naturally 
with the i\^Q Indians resented this action, which resulted in a struggle 
called the Black Hawk war after the chief who led the red men. 
The Indians were beaten, and northern Illinois, southern 
Wisconsin, and eastern Iowa were opened to settlement. In 
1834 Congress established an Indian territory in the valley of 
the Arkansas River and forced the Creeks, Choctaws, and the 
other tribes which occupied the fertile cotton lands of Georgia 
and Mississippi to remove to it. Some of the Seminoles in 
Florida refused to leaA'e their old liome and waged a bloody 
war against the whites from 1835 until 1842. At last the 
remnant of the tribe yielded and were settled in Indian Territory. 
No doubt great injustice was often done the red men, but it 
was hopeless for them to try to stay the irresistible westward 
march of the pioneers. 

But progress during the Jacksonian period was not confined 
to growth in population and industry or to the conquest of 
new lands. As the people came to appreciate the meaning of 
democracy they began to claim free public education as their 
right. Free public school systems were established in the 
middle and western states. This action was easier in the West 
than in the other sections of the country, because Congress had 
given the western states one section of land in each township 
for the support of common schools. Not much was yet done 
for public education in the South, but the New England states 
had provided fi'ee schools for boys ever since the colonial 
period. Early in the nineteenth century girls }:)egan to be 
admitted to these schools. Under the inspiring leadership 
of Horace Mann, Massachusetts led the other states in length- 
ening the school term, in spending more money for education, 
and in establishing normal schools for the training of teachers. 
In the meantime many new colleges and universities were 
founded. At first none of the American colleges admitted 
women, but in 1833 Oberlin College opened the door of higher 
education, to them by admitting them on the same terms as 
men. In 1836 Mary Lyon founded Mount Holyoke, the first 
of the great women's colleges of our country. 

Meanwhile more rapid means of transportation, a better 
postal service, and lower rates of postage gave the newspapers 
a wider circulation and a wider influence upon public opinion. 



New names 
in literature 



A PERIOD OF PROGRESS 



333 




Emerson 
Hawthorne 



Famous prose 



writers and poets of the Nineteenth Century. 



334 



THE TIMES OF ANDREW JACKSON 



Better papers and magazines were published, and a new group 
of great American writers appeared. Irving, Bryant, and 
Cooper began their work at an earlier period, but in Jackson's 
time we first hear of those brilliant poets, Poe, Longfellow, 
Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell, and of our greatest prose waiters, 
Emerson and Hawthorne. 

Nor was this age of activity and progress lacking on the 

religious side. The spii-it of toleration was growing in the land. 

Religious Sunday-schools for the religious training of children were 

development organized in nearly all the Protestant churches. The missionary 

spirit was more fervent than ever before in our country. The 

Catholic Church 
had always been 
zealous in mission- 
ary work, and now 
the various Pro- 
testant denomina- 
tions began to take 
an active part in 
carrying the gospel 
to the frontier and 
to foreign lands. 

In such a time 
of ferment and of 
new ideas it was 
easy for strange re- 
ligious teachers to 
obtain a hearing and to found new sects. The Second Day 
Adventists, for example, taught that the end of the world was 
at hand. The Mormon Church was founded by Joseph Smith 
in 1829. Smith publi-shed a new Bible which he called the 
" Book of Mormon." He said that it had lieen given to him by 
the angel of the Lord. Many people believed him, and with 
his followers Smith settled in Ohio, and later at Nauvoo, 
Illinois, where he was killed by a mob. A few years later 
Brigham Young, Smith's successor, led the Mormons to Utah 
where they foimded Salt Lake City. 

Our country enjoyed great material prosperity and was 
filled with new ideas and with new social activities when Jackson 
was president. In that time of growing democracy the aristo- 



Origin of 

the 

Mormons 




© Broun Brothers, N. Y. 
The Mormon Temple and Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Utah 



REFERENCES 335 



cratic institution of skivciy stood out in bokl i-clief and chal- Slavery 

demand: 
attention 



lenged attention. Negro slavery and the rise of the movement "®°^^" ^ 



against it are so important and have had such a profound 
influence upon our history that they must have a chapter to 
themselves. 

REFERENCES. 

MacDoiiakl, Jaeki^onian Democracy; Peck, The Jacksonian Epoch; 
Wilson, Division and Reunion; Burgess, The Middle Period; Dodd, 
Expansion and Conflict; Histoi'ies of the United States by Bassett, Fite, 
Wilson, Schouler, and McMaster. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Favorite Sons. Miizzey, American History, 251-2.58. 

2. The Election of 1824. McMaster, History of the People of the 
United States, V, 55-81. 

3. Jackson's Early Public Life. MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, 
lG-27. 

4. Tlie Inauguration of Jackson. McMaster, History of the People 
of the United States, V, 519-525. 

5. The United States in 1831. Schouler, History of the United States, 
IV, 1-31. 

(5. Andrew Jackson, the Man. Brady, The 'True Andrew Jackson, 
133-155. 

7. A Character Sketch of Jackson. MacDonald, Jacksoniaji Democ- 
racy, 306-315, or Schoider, History of the United States, IV, 265-273. 

8. The Introduction of the Spoils System. McMaster, History of 
the People of the United States, V, 525-536. 

9. The Experience of an Office Holder in Jackson's Time. Hart, 
American History Told by Cordemporaries, III, 531-535. 

10. Calhoun on the Right of NuUificatioi!. Hart, America)i History 
Told l)y Contemporaries, III, 544-548. 

11. Daniel Wt^bster, the Defender of the Constitution. Sparks, 
The Men Who Made the Nation, 318-346. 

12. The Panic of 1837. Hart, Slavery ami Almlitioii, 296-308. 

13. The Origin of the Mormons. McMaster, History of the People 
of the United States, VI, 102-107. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Stories: Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood; Tourgee, Button's 
Inn; Hawthorne, Blithedale Romance. 

Biographies: Brady, The True Andrew Jackson; Sumner, Andrew 
Jackson ; Schurz, Henry Clay; Lodge, Daniel Webster; Von Hoist, John 
C. Calhoun; Shepard, Martin Van Buren. 



336 THE TIMES OF ANDREW JACKSON 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. If there had been such a bargain between Adams and Clay as 
Jackson charged, would it have been wrong? Why? Did you ever hear of 
a bargain like it in the political life of our time? 

2. How did the Democrats of Jackson's time differ from the Jeffer- 
sonian Republicans? Would you have been a Whig or a Democrat in 
Jackson's time? Why? 

3. Does the spoils system prevail in the government of your state, 
county, and city? If so, is anything being done to replace it with a merit 
system? What is meant by a merit system? 

4. Calhoun favored a protective taiiff in 1816. Why did he oppose it 
in 1832? Webster opposed protection m 1824 and favored it m 1832. 
Why did he change his mind? 

5. If Congress passes an act contrary to the Constitution, what is 
the rightful remedy? Which side really gained more by the compromise 
tariff of 1833? 

6. Was Jackson right or wrong in his attitude toward the Bank of the 
United States? Who was to blame for the panic of 1837? 

7. What evidence can you find in Jackson's time that the country 
was really growing more democratic? 

8. Why was it hopeless for the Indians to try to stop the wes'tward 
march of the pioneers? 

9. Look up the history of the public school system of your own state. 
10. Associate all the events you can with 1832. With 1837. 



CHAPTER XVII 

Slavery and Antislavery 

The Early History of Slavery in Our Country. — Slavery 
began in the English colonies in 1G19, when a Dutch trader 
brought twenty negroes to Jamestown. For a long time the Slavery in 
number of slaves increased very slowly, and it was not until the ^^^ colonies 
eighteenth century that the African slave trade became an 
extensive business. At the close of Queen Anne's War in 1713 
Great Britain was given a monopoly of the business of carrying 
slaves from Africa to the New World. Soon British and colonial 
ship-owners were making large profits out of the infamous busi- 
ness of buying or stealing negroes in Africa and selling them in 
America. Slaves were brought to all the English colonies 
though they were far more numerous in the South than in the 
North. Few men in the colonial period seem to have thought 
that slavery was wrong. The Quakers were almost alone in 
protesting against it. 

Slavery was recognized and even protected by the Consti- 
tution. This great law, by which the people created our govern- 
ment, said that three-fifths of the slaves should be added to Slavery 
the whole number of free persons in apportioning representa- recognized 
fives among the states according to their population; it pro- gtitution 
videcl that runaway slaves should be retvn-ned to their masters; 
and it forbade Congress to stop the foreign slave trade before 
1808. Yet the men who made the Constitution seemed to feel 
that slavery was wrong, for they carefully avoided the word 
slaves and called them "all other persons" or ''persons held 
to service or labor." That the North and the South were already 
beginning to feel differently about slavery is shown by the fact 
that two of the references to it in the Constitution were the 
result of compromises between those sections. 

Indeed, when our Revolutionary fathers declared that all 
men are created equal and endowed with the right to life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they could not well help Slavery 
seeing how inconsistent these ideas were with their conduct in abolished in 
holding black men in bondage. During the generation follow- ^ ^^^ 
22 337 



338 



SLAVERY AND ANTISLAVERY 



ing the Revolution all the states north of Mason and Dixon's 
line either abolished slavery or provided for gradually freeing 
the slaves within their borders. This action was not difficult in 
the North where slavery did not pay and where the number of 
slaves was small. But it was a much more serious matter in 
the South where nearly alh industry was carried on with slave 

labor. Some southern 
men like Jefferson 
hated slavery and 
voted, to exclude it 
from the Northwest 
Territory by the 
Ordinance of 1787. 
But they did not see 
how they could live 
among the mass of 
imcontrolled negroes 
in their own communi- 
ties if the slaves were 
set free, and in the 
getting rid of slavery 




By permissian of the Philadelphia Commercial Museum 

A Southern Planter's Home 
With Colonial verandah or gallery. 



of 



The cotton- 
gin helped to 
fasten 
slavery on 
the South 



end most of them gave up the hope 
in the southern states. 

After the invention of the cotton-gin slavery became more 
profitable than ever in the far South. When the new cotton 
lands in the Southwest were opened the demand for slave labor 
was very great. But Congress had prohibited the foreign slave 
trade in 1808, and no more negroes could lawfully be brought 
from Africa. Traders now began to pay good prices for the 
surplus slaves in the border states of Maryland, Virginia, and 
Kentucky, and to sell them at a profit to the cotton planters 
farther south. In this way the cotton-gin tended to fasten 
slavery upon the slaveholding states that did not grow cotton 
as well as upon those that did. The people of the South began 
to defend slavery and to resent any suggestion that it was 
wrong and ought to he al)olished. 

The Missouri Compromise. — The first serious clash between 

the North and the South came over a question that was destined 

The sections to he a bone of contention between these two sections for the 

clash over ^^y^^ forty years. Should slavery be permitted to expand in 

the West? Very early in the history of the nation the Ohio 



slavery 



THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 339 

River had l)eeii made the houndary bi^twccn IVcc and slave 
territory. Slavery had Ix'cn prohiljited in the Northwest 
Territory in 1787, but it was peimittcd south of the Ohio, and 
by 1819 all the coinilry between that river and the Gulf of 
Mexico had b(HMi made into slave states. We have seen already 
how new states were admitted into the Union in such a way 
that the slave states equaled the free states in number, thus 
keeping up a balance of pow<>r l)etw(>en the sections in the 
Senate. 

In 1819 the tei-ritory of Missouri asked to be made a 
state. While the House of Representatives was considering a 
bill for its admission into the Union a northern member moved Freedom and 
that no more slaves should l)e taken into Missouri and that all ^^^^^^7 *^°°~ 
children Ijorn in the state after its admission should be free Missouri 
vipon reaching the age of twenty-five years. In time this 
would have made Missouri a free state. This motion made the 
southern members very angry and led to a hot debate. In the 
end the house adopted the proposition to e^xclude slavery from 
Missouri but the Senate rejected it. Thus ended the matter 
for that session of Congress. 

The whole country was very much stirred up over the ques- 
tion of slavery in Missouri. Everywhere^ in the North the 
people condemned the extension of slavery into the western The 
territory. In the South the slave-owners declared that the Missouri 
Constitution gave them the right to settle in any territory of 
the United States with their slaves. In 1820 the house again 
voted to prohibit slavery in Missouri. It happened that just 
at this time Maine was asking to be made a state. A compro- 
mise was proposed in the Senate providing that Maine should 
be admitted as a free state and Missouri as a slave state, but 
that slavery should be prohibited forever in all the remainder 
of the Louisiana Purchase north of thirty-six degrees thirty 
minutes north latitude. At last both houses agreed to this 
compromise and it became a law. 

The Missouri Compromise is one of the most important 
events in our history. The discussion of it awakened the North 
and the South to a consciousness of the growing difference Importance 
between them and began the long struggle between freedom °^ ^^^^ 
and slavery which in the end almost destroyed the Union. No 
one saw the threatening danger more clearly or stated it more 



340 



SLAVERY AND ANTISLAVERY 



forcibly than the aged ex-president Thomas Jefferson. "This 
momentous question," he wrote, "hke a fire bell in the night, 
awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once 
as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. 
But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical 
line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, 
once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will 
never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it 
deeper and deeper." This continued to be done until slavery, 




Free and Slave Territory after the Missouri Compromise 



The great 
slaveholders 



the real cause of the irritation between the North and the 
South, was swept away in the fires of a great civil war. 

Life in the Slaveholding States. — A study of life in the 
South will help us to understand how slavery was steadily 
making that section more and more unlike the rest of the 
country. We must realize what slavery was like in order to 
appreciate why so many people in the North wanted to keep 
it out of the western territory and why the abolitionists hated 
it and were eager to destro}^ it. We must not think that all 
the people of the South were slaveholders. In all that section 
there were only about eight thousand large planters owning 



LIFE IN THE SLAVEHOLDING STATES 



341 



more than fifty slaves apiece. Most of these men hved in the 
fertile river valleys on the Atlantic Coast or on the rich cotton 
or sugar lands of the Gulf states. This small group of wealthy 
planters possessed homes of luxury and were educated gentle- 
men with great influence in their states. They were the real 
rulers of the South. 

Next to the great planters were about three hundred 
thousand small slave-owners. More than half of them owned 
less than five slaves each. A majority of these small slave- 
owners were men of little education who lived in homes lacking 
most of the ordinary comforts cf life and worked hard looking 
after their farms. They were most numerous in the upland 
region between the 
coast plains and the 
mountains. 

About three-fourths 
of all the white men 
in the South owned no 
slaves at all. Most of 
these non-slaveholders 
were small farmers who 
lived in little cabins in 
t he hill country or in the 
valleys of the moun- 
tains. Some of them, especially those who lived in the pine 
forests near the coast, were shiftless and degraded, and de- 
served the name of "poor white trash" which w'as often given 
them. But the vast majority of the poor whites of the South 
were brave and hard-working men. They were poor because 
the competition of slave labor did, not give them a fair chance, 
and ignorant because their section of the country lacked good 
public schools. 

A few of the more attractive and intelligent negroes were 
employed as house servants or as. mechanics. The great mass 
of the slaves, however, were field hands upon the farms and 
plantations. These field hands were slow, awkward, and un- 
skilled workers. They could use only plows and heavy hoes 
in cultivating cotton, tobacco, and sugar-cane. They lacked 
the intelligence to work with machinery, and any effort to 
educate and train them would have unfitted them for slavery. 



The small 
slave- 
owners 




By ptt miA^ion of the P> ilaJtJpli^a Commtrcial Mustum 

Picking Cotton 

Hand picking has been superseded in many places 

by the machine pickers. 



Most 
southern 
white men 
owned no 

slaves 



House 
servants 
and field 
hands 



342 



SLAVERY AND ANTISLAVERY 



Masters 
and slaves 



The treatment which the slaves received varied with the 
character of their masters and the part of the country in which 
they hved. Some masters were kind and just men who looked 
thoughtfully after the welfare of their slaves; a few were care- 
less or even brutal in their attitude toward them. But most 
men were as careful about the physical welfare of their slaves 
as sensible farmers now are of their domestic animals, because 
that was the way to make them most profitable. The lot of 
the slaves was v(n-y much happier in A'irginia and Kentucky, 




. ' ' !n:<swii of the PhilatI' 

Weighing Seed Cotton 



Shelter 
and food 



where the master and mistress gave them their personal atten- 
tion, than it was on the great cotton plantations of the far South, 
where they were often driven to work in large gangs by overseers. 
The slaves on the large plantations lived in little houses 
grouped near together and called the ''quarters." Many of 
the slave quarters were comfortable log cabins, others were 
filthy hovels unfit to shelter cattle. The clothing of the slave 
consisted of a shirt and trousers, or a dress of the coarsest mate- 
rial, and a pair of heavy shoes. Slaves were fed at the smallest 
possible expense, mainly upon corn meal and pork. The weekly 
allowance of food upon one Virginia plantation was a peck and 



LIFE IN THE SLAVEHOLDING STATES 



343 



a half of corn meal, three pounds of bacon, and a little salt. 
A Mississippi planter gave his slaves one peck of meal, three 
pounds of pork, and a quart of molasses each week. 

The life of the house servants was often easy and there 
were seasons of the year when the negroes on the farms of the 
border slave states did not have to toil very hard, l)ut the The work of 
slaves on the cotton plantations were driven for long hours slaves 
every day. One overseer, who boasted — "I do better by 
my niggers than most," when asked by a traveler about their 



It 






f 




Reproduced h/i j)er7Hl.s.Kioii of the Pliilndcljihin Cnmnurciiil Musema 
Bales of Cotton on a Wharf at New Orleans 

hours of labor said: "Well, I don't never start my niggers 
'fore daylight, 'less 'tis in pickin' time, then maybe I get 'em 
out a quarter of an hour before. But I keep 'em right smart to 
work through the day." A slave could not be expected to work 
so hard unless he were driven to do so by the hope of reward 
or the fear of pimishment. Some masters gave each slave a 
certain amount of work to do each day and permitted him to 
stop working when he had finished the daily task. But in most 
cases the slave worked from the fear of punishment. On many 
of the large plantations white overseers or negro slave-drivers 
armed with whips were sent to the fields with the gangs of 



344 



SLAVERY AND ANTISLAVERY 



slaves to keep them steadily at work. Whipping was the 
common punishment for laziness or misconduct. 

A slave belonged by law to his master, like a horse or a 
dog. He could be bought or sold like any other property. One 
Buying and! of the worst features of slavery was the fact that it made it 
selling slaves inipossible for the negro to have a real family life. The father, 
the mother, or the children might be sold and taken away at 
any time. Humane masters avoided, as far as possible, such 
breaking up of slave families, but this was not uncommon. 
"Negroes for sale," and "Cash for negroes," were common adver- 
tisements in southern newspapers. For example, an auctioneer 
in South Carolina announces that he will sell one hundred valu- 
able negroes, among whom are "twenty-five prime young men, 
forty of the most likely young women, and as fine a set of 
children as can be shown." A firm in Natchez, Mississippi, 
advertises "ninety negroes just arrived from Richmond, con- 
sisting of field hands, house servants, carriage drivers, several 
fine cooks, and some excellent mules." The best young men 
were often sold for twelve hundred dollars each, and young 
women brought from eight hundred to a thousand apiece. 

The life of the slave was a mere animal existence. It 
was not commonly filled with cruelty or actual distress, but 
it was marked by fear and uncertainty. The slaves lived in 
dismal ignorance and moral darkness. The laws of most of 
the slave states made it a crime to teach a slave to read or write. 
Idle and neglected, while children and when very old, the slaves 
spent all the active years of their liv(^s in unpaid toil without 
hope of anything better in future. 

Slavery was almost as great a curse to the white people of 
the South as it was to the negroes. It made the masters proud, 
passionate, and overbearing. White children who grew up 
with negro playmates learned much that was evil from them. 
Ignorant, unskilled, and unwilling slave labor retarded the 
industrial development of the slaveholding states, in which 
they were very backward when compared with the free states. 
Later we shall see that after the South got rid of slavery its 
industries grew as they never could have grown with slave 
labor. 

We have seen how some of the early leaders of the South 
wanted to rid their states of slavery, but could not find any 



Slavery was 
an evil to 
both races 



LIFE IN THE SLAVEHOLDING STATES 



345 



practicable way of abolishing it. After the invention of the The defense 
cotton-gin made slavery more profitable in the South the °^ slavery 
slave-owners began to make excuses for it and ended by attempt- 
ing to justify it. It was proclaimed from the pulpit that slavery 
is a divinely ordained institution sanctioned by the Bible. 
The n(nvspapcrs and the politicians declared that the negroes 




Keystone View Co., Mcadnlle, Pa. 
A Modern Textile Mill. 
Spinning yam and winding it on thousands of bobbins 



were utterly unfit to be freemen and that they were happy and 
contented as slaves. A governor of South Carolina, after 
declaring that the slaves were comfortably clothed and well 
fed, and that they worked fewer hours than the workmen of 
other countries, said: "And as it regards concern for the future, 
their condition may well be (mvied even by their masters. There 
is not upon the face of the earth, any class of people, high or low, 
so perfectly free from care and anxiety. They know that their 
masters will provide for them under all circumstances, and 
that in the extremity of old age, instead of being driven to 



346 SLAVERY AND ANTISLAVERY 

beggary or to seek public charity in a poorhouse, they will be 
comfortably accommodated and kindly treated among theu- 
relatives and associates." 

The Rise of the Antislavery Movement. — The Revolu- 
tion was followed by a rising hostility to slavery. We have 
Early seen how this feeling brought about the abolition of it in the 

opposition North. This dislike of slavery was shared in many parts of 
the South, and a few slave-owners in that section freed their 
slaves and tried to persuade others to do likewise. . In 1816 
the American Colonization Society was formed to send the 
freed negroes back to Africa, and six years later the colony of 
Liberia was established for them. About the same time Ben- 
jamin Lundy, a gentle and unselfish Quaker, devoted his life 
to the cause of the slave. Lundy travelexl widely making 
antislavery speeches, organized antislavery societies, and 
published an abolition newspaper. The Genius of Universal 
Emancipation. His work met with slight response. For ten 
years after the passage of the Missouri Compromise there was 
little agitation against slavery. When Jackson became presi- 
dent in 1829 the antislavery cause seemed hopeless. Slavery 
was steadily increasing its hold on the South, the leaders of 
that section were beginning to defend it, and al^olitionists like 
Lundy were in despair over the fact that the northern people 
appeared to have lost all interest in the matter. 

But about 1830 the movement against slavery suddenly 
blazed up more fiercely than ever. Just at that time the 
New interest thoughts of freedom and of humanity seemed to be in the air 
in abolition g^jj q^^j. ^j^g world. Slavery had recently been al^olished in 
all the Latin-American countries excepting Brazil. In 1833 the 
slaves were emancipated everywhere in the British Empire. 
In our own country, as we have already noted, a kindlier spirit 
toward the weak and the helpless was leading to better treat- 
ment of convicts, paupers, and the insane. The renewed in- 
terest in abolition found a leader in 1831, when William Lloyd 
Garrison begun to pu])lish the Liberator', the most famous 
and influential antislavery paper. Two years later Garrison 
and other abolitionists formed the American Antislavery 
Society. 

The founders of this society maintained that no man has 
a right to enslave another, to hold him as a piece of merchandise, 



RISE OF THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT 347 

or to hiTitalize his mind by tlciiying liiiu the means of improvinji; The 

it. They dciclared that every man has a right to his own body, American 

to the products of liis own laboi-, and to the protection of the Society 

law. They proclaimed that the slaves ought instantly to be 

set free, and pledged themselves to work with voice and pen 

for this end. They planned to organize antislavery societies 

in every community. 

The agitation to which the abolitionists pledged themselves 
was carried on with zeal and devotion, but it was so extreme 
and radical that it did not win many converts. It did, however, jj^g effects 
make the people think about slavery. Its first effect was to of anti- 
arouse the wrath of the South. A Virginia slave named Nat ^^^^fi^ 
Turner had recently led a slave uprising in which sixty white 
people were killed before Turner was caught and hanged. It 
was natural that the people of the South should look with horror 
upon abolition teaching which might stir up more slave insur- 
rections. They demanded that the abolitionists be silenced 
by force. 

At first many northern people sympathized with this 
demand of the South. The politicians who wanted to curry 
favor with the South, the merchants and manufactiu'ers who Northern 
feared to lose their southern customers, the timid and conserva- hostility to 
tive people who thought that the agitation of the slavery tio^nfsts ^' 
question might break up the Union, and the unthinking rablile 
who hated the negro were all bitter against the abolitionists. 
Mobs broke up their meetings, destroyed their printing-presses, 
and attacked their leaders. Garrison was dragged tkrough the 
streets of Boston, and finally put in jail to save him from the 
fury of the mob. Pennsylvania Hall, the meeting place of the 
abolitionists in Philadelphia, was bm^ned. Instead of silencing 
the abolitionists, all this persecution only deepened their hatred 
of slavery and hardened their purpose to destroj^ it. 

Some of the abolitionists wished to form a new political 
party to oppose slavery. Others like Garrison refused to have 
anything to do with politics, took for their motto: "No union The Liberty 
with slaveholders," and said that the Constitution was "a ^^^^ 
covenant with death and an agreement with hell" because it 
recognized slavery. In 1840 the political abolitionists formed 
the Liberty party and nominated James G. Birney for the 
presidency. Birney received only seven thousand votes, but 



348 



SLAVERY AND ANTISLAVERY 



Garrison 
and the 
Liberator 



the rapid growth of the Liberty party is indicated by the fact 

that when he ran again in 1844 more than sixty-two thousand 

antislavery men voted for hiin. 

Three Great Abolition Leaders. — Wilham Lloyd Garrison 

was the foremost editor of the antislavery cause. When he 

began to publish the 
Liberator in Boston he 
was an unknown 
young printer without 
money or influence. 
Lowell gives us this 
picture of him at 
work: 

" In a small chamber, 

friendless and unseen, 

Toiled o'er his types 

one poor, unlearned 

yoimg man 

The place was dark, un- 

f urnitured, and mean, 

Yet there the freedom 

of a race began." 

Garrison was a re- 
markable writer, and 
he hated slavery with 
all the force of his 
ardent nature. In the 
first number of the 
Liberator he said, "I 
am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but 
I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. 
I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I 
wiU not retreat a single inch— AND I WILL BE HEARD!" 
Garrison was true to this promise, and although few agreed 
with his radical opinions, he wielded a profound influence 
because he forced people to think about the evils of slavery. 
But with all his zeal for freedom, Garrison was a one-sided and 
prejudiced man who denounced slavery and the slaveholders 
in the same scathing terms. He was unable to understand that 
while slavery was wrong many slaveholders were good men. 




William Lloyd Garrison 
Abolitionist leader and publisher of the "Liberator' 



THREE GREAT ABOLITION LEADERS 349 

John G. Whittier was the poet of the aboHtion movement 
who most closely touched the hearts of the people. His many 
anti slavery poems were widely read, and they exerted a deep The poet of 
influence in arousing public sentiment against slavery. Whittier abolition 
voices the feeling of the enemies of slavery about one of the 
worst features of slave life in the following lament of a Virginia 
slave mother whose daughters have been sold to a South Caro- 
lina planter: 

"Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and Igne. 
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, " 
Where the noisome insect stings, 
Where the fever demon strews 
Poison with the falling dews, 
Where the sickly sunbeams glare 
Through the hot and misty air; 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
To the rice-swamps dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters, — 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!" 

The cause of abolition found its greatest orator in Wendell 
Phillips. In 1837 Elijah P. Lovejoy, the editor of an anti- 
slavery paper at Alton, Illinois, was killed by a mob that The fore- 
sought to destroy his printing-press. At a meeting of the ^°^^ ^'^''" 
citizens of Boston in Faneuil Hall, held to express theu* horror orator 
at this murder, the attorney-general of Massachusetts con- 
demned Lovejoy and excused his murderers. Wendell Phillips, 
a 3^oung and unknown lawyer, at once ascended the platform 
and answered the defender of mob violence in one of the most 
brilliant speeches in our history. From that hour until slavery 
was abolished, Wendell Phillips was its most eloquent foe. Two 
sentences from his first great speech in Faneuil Hall will help 
you to feel his power as an orator. Early in the speech he said, 
"When I heard the gentleman lay down principles which place 
the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, 
with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing 
to the portraits in the hall] would have broken into voice to 
rebuke the recreant American — the slanderer of the dead." 
A moment later Phillips declared that Lovejoy died for a greater 



350 



SLAVERY AND ANTISLAVERY 



Abolition 
papers in 
the mail 



The 
rule' 



gag 



cause than that of the RevoUitionary fathers. When the 
audience resented this statement he retorted: "One word, 
gentlemen. As much as thought is better than money, so 
much is the cause in which Love joy died nobler than a mere 
question of taxes. James Otis thundered in this hall when 

the king did but touch his 
pocket. Imagine, if you 
can, his indignant eloquence 
had England offered to put 
a gag upon his lipsP^ 

The Slavery Question 
in Congress. — The action 
of the abolitionists in send- 
ing their literature through 
the mail to people in the 
South was ver}'' displeasing 
to that section. One night 
in L835 some of the citizens 
of Charleston, South Caro- 
lina, broke into . the post 
office in that city, searched 
the mails, and seized and 
burned all the antislavery 
papers which they found. 
T h e postmaster-general 
was next asked to exclude 
abolition matter from the mail. He replied that, while he 
wished it might be done, he had no legal right to do it. Never- 
theless, the postmaster in New York refused to forward anti- 
slavery publications, and some southern postmasters would 
not deliver them. In his annual message of 1835, President 
Jackson asked Congress to prohibit the circulation in the 
southern states of papers "intended to instigate the slaves to 
insurrection," but when John C. Calhoun l:)rought forward a 
bill to carry the president's suggestion into effect it was 
defeated. 

The pro-slavery men were more successful in an attempt 
to exclude petitions concerning slavery from the House of 
Representatives. For years the Quakers had been in the habit 
of petitioning Congress to abolish slavery in the District of 




From F. Gutekuast Co., Philaddiihia, Pa. 

Wendell Phillips 
The greatest orator for the cause of abolition. 



SLAVERY BECOMES THE QUESTION 351 

Columbia. As the agitation against slavery grew, the number 
of the signers of such petitions increased from thirty-four 
thousand in 1835 to three hundred thousand two years later. 
The impatient southerners determined to stop this flood of 
petitions. Through their efforts the House of Representatives 
made a rule in 1836 forbidding the reading or printing of any 
petition or paper about slavery. This rule is often called the 
"gag rule," because its purpose was to stop the discussion of 
slavery in the house. 

After he retired from the presidency John Quincy Adams 
rounded out his distinguished puljlic career by serving for 
seventeen years in the House of Representatives. When the The 
vote was taken on the "gag rule" Adams said, "I hold the "old man 
resolution to be a direct violation of the Constitution of the ® ''^"^^^ 
United States, of the rules of this house, and of the rights of 
my constituents." From the moment the "gag" policy was 
adopted, the "old man eloquent," as Adams was called, became 
the champion of the right of petition. Able, experienced, and 
a born fighter, no man was better fitted for the task than the 
venerable ex-president. He declared that the "gag rule" 
sacrificed the rights of the people guaranteed by the Constitu- 
tion, and persisted in offering petitions against slavery in the 
face of efforts to censure him for violating the rules of the 
hous(\ At last, after a fight which lasted eight years, he 
succeeded in having the hateful rule repealed. That night 
the old Puritan wrote in his diary, "Blessed, forever blessed, 
be the name of God!" 

The efforts of the friends of slavery to suppress the right 
of petition and to prevent any discussion of the slavery ciuestion 
in Congress utterly failed in their purpose. In fact, they won The result of 
more men to the cause of antislavery than all the appeals of trying to 
the abolitionists. Many people who had little sympathy for gpfgch" ^""^^ 
the extreme views of Garrison resented the effort to limit 
discussion in Congress. 

Slavery Becomes the Question of the Hour. — Before 
Jackson retired from the presidency, slavery was rapidly 
becoming the most important question before the American Growing 
people. The abolition leaders were slowly winning followers, bitterness 
An ever-increasing number of people in the fi'ce states who ''^^yy^®'^ ^^^ 
were not abolitionists were alarmed and disgusted at the 



352 SLAVERY AND ANTISLAVERY 

efforts of the pro-slavery forces to suppress freedom of speech 
and of the press. In the South, hatred of the abohtionists and 
fear that the slaves might rise against then- masters made the 
people more irritable and more assertive of their rights. Cal- 
houn called the petitions of the Quakers against slavery "a 
foul slander" on his part of the country, and another spokesman 
of the South declared that "slavery is interwoven with our 
very pohtical existence." The southern states passed more 
severe laws to keep the slaves in subjection, and the young men 
of the South banded together to enforce these laws and to defend 
their section and its institutions against any possible aggression. 
When the Constitution was first made, the feeling of nation- 
ality was weak in our country. Men loved their states better 
The national than they loved the nation. For fifty years this feeling had been 
spirit 1.^ <^o^- slowly changing. The influence of Washington, pride in the 
state rights splendid achievements of our gallant navy in the War of 1812, 
the winning of the West, improved means of communication, 
the national spirit of Jackson, and the matchless eloquence of 
Webster were all leading our people to exalt the Union above 
the states. They were coming to feel that they were all Ameri- 
cans with common interests and a splendid destiny. For a 
time all sections shared in this growing feeling of national 
unity. But when slavery began to divide the country, the 
people of the South felt that they must look to their own 
states to defend them against attacks upon their peculiar 
institution. This feeling checked the growth of nationality in 
their part of the country and revived and strengthened the 
belief in state rights. 

In the meantime, as we shall see in the next chapter, the 

ambitious and land-hungry frontiersmen were pushing their 

An all- way across the continent to the Pacific Coast. The southern 

important leaders saw that they must create new slave states in the 
question ^tt- -r- i i i • • i • i 

West II they were to keep then- power m the national govern- 
ment. Their attempts, between 1840 and 1850, to extend 
slavery into the West and the efforts of the free North to thwart 
them, made slavery the all-absorbing question before the 
country. By 1850 Senator Seward of New York could say 
with truth, "Every question brings up slavery as an incident, 
and the incident supplants the principal question. We hear 
of nothing but slavery, and we can talk of nothing but slavery." 



REFERENCES 353 

REFERENCES. 

Hart, Slavery and Abolition; Phillips, American Negro Slavery; 
Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. I, Chap. IV; Ingle, Southern 
Side Lights; Brown, The Lower Soxdh in American History; Histories of 
the United States by McMaster, Schouler, and Wilson. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. How the North Abolished Slavery. Fiske, The Critical Period, 
71-76. 

2. The Missouri Compromise. Turner, The Rise of the New West, 
149-171. 

3. Plantation Life. Hart, Slavery and Aholition, 92-108. 

4. Life with a Slave Breaker. Hart, American History Told by Con- 
temporaries, III, 579-583. 

5. A Southern Defense of Slavery. Hart, Source Book of American 
History, 244-248. 

6. A Cheerful View of Slavery. Hart, American. History Told by 
Contemporaries, III, 591-594. 

7. The Buying and Selling of Slaves. Rhodes, History of the United 
States, I, 318-325. 

8. A Scene at a Slave Auction. Wise, The End of an Era, 80-87. 

9. A Slave's Narrative. Hart, Source Book of American History, 
255-257. 

10. A Statement of Garrison's Principles. Hart, American History 
Told by Contemporaries, III, 595-597. 

11. Garrison and the Mob. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, II, 
16-27. 

12. Phillips' Faneuil Hall Speech. Johnston, American Orations, II. 
33-45. 

13. An Antislavery Speech in Congress. Hart, American History 
Told by Contemporaries, III, 622-625. 

14. John Quincy Adams in Defense of Free Speech. Hart, American 
History Told by Contemporaries, III, 633-636. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: howell, Sta7izas on Freedom ; Longfellow, The Slave's Dream; 
The Slave in the Dismal Swamp; The Witnesses; Whittier, The Farewell; 
The Christian Slave; Massachusetts to Virginia; and many other anti- 
slavery poems. 

Novels: Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; Hildreth, The Slave; Tiernan, 
Suzette; Homoselle; Woolson, East Angels; Belt, Mirage of Promise; 
Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman. 
23 



354 SLAVERY AND ANTISLAVERY 

Travels and Journals: Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave 
Stales; A Journey through Texas; A Journey in the Back Country; 
Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation; Smedes, Memo- 
rials of a Southern Planter; Longstreet, Georgia Scenes; Johnston, Old 
Times in Middle Georgia; Page, The Old South. 

Biographies: Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison; Kennedy, John 
Greenleaf Whitticr; Higginson, Wendell Phillips; Birney, James G. Birney 
and His Times. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. When did Great Britain abolish the slave trade? 

2. How did the cotton-gin make slavery more profitable in the slave 
states that did not grow cotton? 

3. Trace the Missouri Compromise line on a map. Was the com- 
promise more favorable to the North or to the South? Why was it a very 
important law? 

4. If all white men could vote, how could the small number of rich 
planters be "the real rulers of the South"? Is there a similar situation in 
our country now? 

5. Why were the school systems of the South inferior to those of the 
North? 

6. What motives induce people to work? Did the slaves have any of 
these motives? 

7. \\Tiy was slavery wrong? Can you answer the argimient in favor 
of slavery given in the quotation from the governor of South Carolina? 

8. Do you admire men like William Lloyd Garrison? Why? 

9. Find and read several of Whittier's antislavery poems. 

10. What is an orator? Did you ever hear one? 

11. Are there any publications that the government refuses to carry 
in the mail now? 

12. Why did the efforts to suppress the abolitionists helj) to make them 
more numerous? 

13. Which do you love more, the United States or your own state? 
Why? 



CHAPTER XVIII 



The Winning of Texas and the Far West 



President Tyler Quarrels with the Whigs. — On March 4, 
1841, William Henry Hanison was inaugurated president of 
the United States, and for the first time in its history the Whig Inaugura- 
party came into control of the government. The Whigs were ^^^^ ^^^ 
jubilant, but their joy was soon turned into mourning. Presi- Harrison 
dent Harrison was sixty 
eight years old and not 
robust. He was worn 
out by the excitement 
of the noisy campaign 
which preceded his elec- 
tion and fatigued by the 
long journey from his 
home to the capital. 
The swarms of office- 
seekers which beset him 
day and night gave him 
little opportunity to 
rest, and careless expos 
ure brought on pneu 
monia of which he died 
just one month after 
entering the White 
House. 

The Whigs intended 
to reestablish a national 
bank like the one 
which Jackson fought 

and to raise the tariff, but they were thwarted by John Tyler, 
the vice-president, who became president when Harrison died. The Whigs 
Tyler was a state rights Democrat who had quarreled with Jack- desert Tyler 
son. He was nominated for vice-president by the Whigs to win 
the votes of discontented Democrats like himself. President 
Tyler vetoed two bank acts which Congress passed, and he 

355 




William Henry Harrison 



356 



WINNING OF TEXAS AND FAR WEST 



Our north- 
eastern 
boundary 
established 



Rival claims 
to Texas 



would not sign a bill raising the tariff until 1842. When the 
Whigs found that Tyler meant to prevent the reestablishment 
of a national bank they deserted him, and all his cabinet officers 
except Webster resigned. During most of his term John Tyler 
was a president without a party. 

When Tyler's other cabinet officers left him in disgust at 

his refusal to support 
the policy of the party 
that elected him, Web- 
ster retained the office 
of secretary of state 
for a time in order to 
complete a difficult ne- 
gotiation which he was 
carrying on with Eng- 
land. Ever since the 
close of the Revolution 
we had been disputing 
with England about the 
exact location of our 
northeastern boundary. 
The irritation between 
Maine and Canada over 
this matter was becom- 
ing so great that it 
threatened war. For- 
tunately, trouble was 
averted by a treaty 
which Webster and 
Lord Ashburton made in 1842. Each side sensibly gave up a 
' part of what it claimed, and the present northern boundary of 
Maine was agreed upon as the dividing line between the two 
nations. When this question was settled Webster also re- 
signed. No doubt Tyler was glad to see him go, for the presi- 
dent had set his heart upon annexing the vast and fertile country 
of Texas and he knew that Webster was opposed to such action. 
The Story of Texas. — The territory comprised within the 
present state of Texas was once claimed by both France and 
Spain. When we bought Louisiana in 1803 we acquired anyrights 
which France had possessed in that region. President Jeffer- 




John Tyler 



THE STORY OF TEXAS 357 

son declared that the Rio Grande was the southwestern bound- 
ary of the Louisiana Purchase, but Spain never admitted this 
claim. When we bought Floi-ida from Spain in 1819 we agreed 
to accept the Sabine River as our western boundary on the Gulf 
coast. Clearly we had no lawful claim to Texas after that date. 
All this time Texas was an unsettled wilderness. But in 

1819 the rush into the West which followed the War of 1812 

was at its height. Hardy frontiersmen were exploring all our American 
western border in search of good land, and they found the fertile P^oiieers in 
I)lains and mild climate of Texas wonderfullj^ attractive. In 

1820 Moses Austin and his son Stephen asked Mexico to grant 
them land in Texas and to permit them to settle upon it. The 
Mexicans, who were just winning their independence from 
Spain, were eager for the development of their unsettled territory 
and readily gave the Austins a large tract of land. Similar 
grants were made to other Americans who asked for them. 
Moses Austin soon died but Stephen F. Austin led many 
immigrants into Texas and became the real founder of that 
state. By 1830 there were twenty thousand American pioneers 
living in Texas, and its broad acres were being rapidly (.'onverted 
into cotton plantations and cattle ranches. 

The American settlers in Texas soon became dissatisfied 
with the efforts of the government of Mexico to control their 
affairs. The Mexicans on the other hand became alarmed at Trouble 
the growing strength of the Americans in one of their states, between 
They forbade the admission of any more immigrants from the Mexico 
United States, stationed Mexican garrisons in Texas, and vexed 
and oppressed the settlers in that stat<^ in other ways. In 
1829 slavery was abolished in Mexico. Most of the American 
settlers in Texas came from slaveholding states, and many of 
them had brought their slaves with them. Americans continued 
to go to Texas in spite of the effort of Mexico to exclude them, 
and the Texans paid no attention to the Mexican law prohibiting 
slaver3^ Foremost among the later American settlers in Texas 
were Sam Houston, a former governor of Tennessee, and David 
Crockett, a famous frontiersman whose skill as a hunter was 
a proverb all along the border. 

The Texans soon began to desire their independence. The Texans 
They hated the Mexicans, who they felt to be quite unfit to f^d^end^^^^ 
govern themselves, much less to rule any one else. In 1835 ence 



358 



WINNING OF TEXAS AND FAR WEST 



The Alamo 



the American settlers in Texas took up ai-ms and drove the 
Mexican garrisons out of the country. Early the next year 
they adopted a declaration of independence in which they 
asserted that their political connection with the Mexican nation 
was forever ended, and proclaimed Texas a free and indepen- 
dent republic. 

In the meantime General Santa Anna led a large force of 
Mexicans into Texas. At first the Texans met with disaster. 
One hundred and eighty-three of them under Colonel Travis 




Keysitone View Co., Meaiteille 
"Remember the Alamo !" 
The old Spanish fort which became the Texas Cradle of Liberty. The Massacre 
enacted here led directly to the Independence of the "Lone Star State". 

were besieged in the Alamo, an old Spanish fort at San Antonio. 
For thirteen days they held out. But at last the walls of the 
Alamo were breached by the Mexican cannon, and thousands 
of Santa Anna's soldiers rushed to the assault. A desperate 
hand-to-hand fight with bayonets and clubbed rifles lasted 
until the last Texan was slain. Old David Crockett was one 
of the last to fall. Shortly after the great fight at the Alamo 
the Mexicans took three hundred prisoners and shot them all 
in cold blood. 
Battle of San These acts of the Mexicans were soon avenged. In April, 

Jacinto 1836, General Sam Houston with seven hundred Texans met 



THE STORY OF TEXAS 359 

Santa Anna at San Jacinto. Charging with the ciy " Remember 
the Alamo!"' the Texans utterly destroyed the Mexican army 
and won the independence of their country at a single blow. 
Less than a year later the United States recognized Texas as an 
independent nation. 

Hunger for the rich lands of Texas was the chief motive 
which led American settlers into that region. But the desire 
of the southern leaders for more slave states, in order to main- Texas 
tain the power of the South in the national government, led ^^esires 
them to encourage the settlement and conquest of Texas in ^o the United 
the hope of soon annexing it to the United States and then of States 
making several slave states of it. Nearly all the people in 
Texas were American citizens before they were Texans, and 
it was natural for them to look forward to the day when their 
country would become a state in the Union. 

At first the United States had l)een just as eager to acquire 
Texas as the Texans were for annexation. Both Adams and 
Jackson had tried to buy Texas from Mexico only to meet the Our attitude 
answer, ''Not for sale." No sooner had Texas declared its toward 
independence in 1836 than it asked to be admitted into the 
Union as a state. . But the rising antislaverj^ sentiment at the 
time made the North unwilling to grant this request. Webster 
voiced the feeling of his section when he said in 1837, "Texas 
is likely to be a slaveholding country, and I frankly avow my 
entire unwillingness to do anything that shall extend the 
slavery of the African race on this continent." Then, too, 
Mexico did not acknowledge the independence of Texas, and 
annexation might easily bring on a war with that country. 
For these reasons no steps were taken toward annexing Texas 
while Jackson and Van Buren were presidents. 

John Tyler was a southern man and a slaveholder. He 
sympathized with the desire of his section to extend slavery in 
the Southwest and was eager to add Texas to the Union in his A treaty 
administration. He could take no steps to bring this about, annexijig 
as. we have seen, until after Webster withdrew from his cabinet. 
In 1843 the desire to get Texas was quickened by the rumor that 
England was planning to acquire it. The next year John C 
Calhoun, then Tyler's secretary of state, made a treaty of 
annexation with Texas, but the feeling against this treaty was 
so strong in the country that it failed to get the necessary two- 



the Senate 



360 



WINNING OF TEXAS AND FAR WEST 



Joint 

occupation 
of Oregon 



Exploration 
of the far 
Northwest 



American 
settlers in 
Oregon 



thirds vote in the Senate. The question of annexing Texas 
then became a leading issue in the presidential election of 1844. 
The Settlement of the Oregon Country.— We have already 
seen hqw England and the United States both claimed the vast 
domain west of the Rocky Mountains between Cahfornia and 
Alaska. In 1818 these nations had agreed that for the present 

the Oregon country, as this 
rich region was called, 
should be free and open to 
both English and American 
traders and settlers. This 
joint occupation arrange- 
ment was renewed in 1827, 
with the understanding that 
either party to it could end 
it by giving the other party 
one year's notice. The 
joint occupation of Oregon 
by England and America 
really meant that eventually 
the country would belong 
to the nation whose people 
actually occupied it. 

Lewis and Clark had 
first shown the way across 
the continent to Oregon. 
American trappers and fur 
traders continued the work 
of exploration which they 
began. These roving frontiersmen found the best passes 
through the Rocky Mountains and marked out the trails 
leading to them. The first actual American settlements in the 
Oregon country were made by missionaries to the Indians about 
1835. The glowing reports of the country which the traders 
and missionaries sent home soon tempted parties of settlers 
to follow the long trail which led to the Pacific Coast. 

Dr. Marcus Whitman, one of the early missionaries to the 
Indians, is the best known of the Oregon pioneers. In 1842 
this heroic man rode alone across the continent from Oregon 
to Boston on business for his mission, and the following year 







'ssJv 



J87a 

S7 o 



The Oregon Country 



THE ELECTION OF 1844 361 

when he returned to the valley of the Columbia River he was 
accompanied across the plains and through the mountains by a 
large party of settlers. In 1844 a thousand more settlers went 
to Oregon. In the meantime only a few British trappers and 
fur traders had entered the Oregon countiy. In 1843 the 
American settlers in Oregon organized a government to manage 
their affairs until the United States should make their country 
a territory. A few men in Congress laughed at the idea of 
governing the far distant Pacific Coast, but by 1844 a majority 
of the American people were eager to have their country 
acquire all of the Oregon region. Thus the expansion of our 
country by the annexation of Texas in the Southwest and the 
occupation of all of Oregon in the far Northwest became the 
burning question before the American people when the time 
came to elect a president in 1844. 

The Election of 1844. — The Democrats in thcni- ]:)latfoi-m 
of 1844 declared in favor of annexing Texas and of holding all 
of Oregon. This gave them a popular issue in each section of The 
the country. In the South, which was eager to acquire more pemocrats 
slave territory, their campaign cry was "The reannexation of expansion 
Texas." By this slogan they meant that Texas had once 
belonged to the United States, that it had been unwisely given 
up in 1819, and that it ought promptly to be recovered. In 
the North, which cared more for securing the land we claimed 
on the Pacific Coast than it did for annexing Texas, the Demo- 
crats shouted, "Fifty-four forty or fight!" By this cry they 
meant that they would go to war with England before they 
would give up a foot of the Oregon country south of 54° 40'. 
north latitude. At first it seemed certain that Martin Van 
Buren would be the Democratic nominee for the third time, 
but his objection to annexing Texas led his party to pass him 
by and make James K. Polk of Tennessee their candidate for 
the presidency. 

The Whigs unanimously nominated their great leader 
Henry Clay. There was not a word in their i:)latform about 
Texas or Oregon. But the Whigs had unbounded confidence Clay and the 
in Clay, and his position upon any important question was Whigs 
certain to win the approval of his followers. Only a few days 
before his nomination Clay had written a letter in which he 
expressed the opinion that the proposed annexation of Texas . 



362 



WINNING OF TEXAS AND FAR WEST 



Texas 
annexed 



Other new 
states 



was sure to bring on a war with Mexico, and added, ''For one, 
I certainly am not willing to involve this country in a foreign 
war for the object of acquiring Texas." This was almost exactly 
the position which lost Van Buren the Democratic nomination. 
Before the campaign closed Clay began to fear that the southern 
Whigs in their desire to get Texas might vote for Polk, and to 

retain their support he 
wrote another letter in 
which he said, "Far from 
having any personal ob- 
jection to the annexation 
of Texas I should be glad 
to see it, without dis- 
honor, without war, with 
the common consent of 
the Union, and upon just 
and fair terms." Prob- 
ably Clay lost more 
votes than he won by 
this letter. After read- 
ing it many antislavery 
Whigs refused to vote 
for him. The Democrats 
won in a very close elec- 
tion, and on March 4, 
1845, James K. Polk 
became president of the 

James Knox Polk t t • . ^ c^, , 

United btates. 
The election of 1844 led to the immediate acquisition of 
Texas. Before President Tyler left the White House both 
houses of Congress passed a resolution offering Texas annex- 
ation to the United States. The people of Texas welcomed this 
proposal with joy, and before the close of 1845 Texas became a 
state in the Union. Florida was admitted the same year. Texas 
and Florida were the last slave states ever admitted to the 
Union. The balance b(^tween the fn^e and slave states was soon 
restored by the admission of Iowa in 1846 and Wisconsin in 1848. 
President Polk did not succeed in making good the bold 
declaration of his party about the Oregon country. Early in 
1846 he made a treaty with England which provided that the 




OUR WAR WITH MEXICO 



363 



boundary line between the United States and the British How the 

possessions should be continued westward alone; the fdi-ty-iiinth Oregon 

. . Question 

parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the middle of the channel ^as 

between Vancouver Island and the mainland and thence along settled 
the middle of the channel around the southern end of that island 
to the Pacific. There were no American settlements north of 
the 1 fort3''-ninth parallel. 
By this treaty the United 
States retained the present 
states of Oregon, Washing- 
ton, and Idaho, and con- 
ceded British Columbia to 
Great Britain. It is much 
to the credit of both Eng- 
land and the United States 
that they settled their long 
and vexing controversy over 
the ownership of the Oregon 
country without l^loodshed. 
Our War with Mex- 
ico. — Just south of the 
Oregon country lay the 
large Mexican province of 
California. In 1845 that 
region was inhabited chiefly 
by Indians with here and 
there a Spanish mission 
station or the home of a 
Mexican cattle rancher. 
At San Francisco and San 

Diego it possessed two of the few good harbors on the Pacific 
coast. California and the other Mexican territory between it 
and Texas lay directly west of the United States, and American 
statesmen were beginning to say that it was the destiny of this 
vast region in the Southwest to fall into our hands. As yet 
our people knew little about the wealth of California. But if 
the daring and ambitious among them ever heard that there 
was gold in that distant region or learned of its wonderful 
possibilities as a land of grain and fruit, Mexico could no 
more have kept them from possessing it than the Indians could 




Fremont in the Rockies 



We 

desire 

California 



364 



WINNING OF TEXAS AND FAR WEST 



John C. 
Fremont, 
"The 
Pathfinder' 



stop the frontiersmen from overrunning the Mississippi Valley. 
Sooner or later California was sure to repeat the history of 
Texas. 

Already steps had been taken to find the best routes to the 
Pacific Coast. Between 1842 and 1845 John C. Fremont, a 
young officer in the army, led several exploring parties into the 



0( ^/% i L 




Fremont's Explorations in the West 



Polk's 
purpose 
to get 
California 



far West, With the help of Kit Carson, one of the most famous 
hunters and scouts in the history of the West, Fremont sought 
out the best passes through the Rocky Mountains, explored the 
basin of Great Salt Lake, and twice reached the Pacific Coast. 
The spring of 1846 found him with his party in the mountains 
of northern California. Fremont's work in locating the trails 
through the great mountains of the West won for him the name 
of "The Pathfinder." 

James K. Polk began his administration in 1845 with the 
purpose of winning the Mexican province of California for the 
United States. He shared the national desire for expansion 



OUR WAR WITH MEXICO 365 

and feared that if we did not acquire California some foreign 
power would. Moreover, as a southern man, Polk was as eager 
as the other leaders of his section to get new lands which might 
be made into slave states. Tiu; antislavery men charged that 
this was his real purpose in trying to acquire land from Mexico. 
Lowell best expressed their opinion when he wrote in the Biglow 
Papers: 

"They jest want this Californy, 
So's to hig new slave-states in. 
To abuse ye, an' to scorn ye, 
An' to phmder ye Hke sin." 

President Polk meant to fight for California if necessary, 

but first he tried to get it by peaceful methods. Just at this 

time Mexico owed citizens of the United States several million His efforts to 

dollars which she had no money to pay. Then there was a dis- ^^f^^lt^^ . 

witn. JVLcxico 
pute about the boundary line between Texas and Mexico, fall 

Texas claimed all the land east of the Rio Grande River from 
its mouth to its source. Mexico said with just as much reason 
that the Nueces River was the southern limit of Texas. Polk 
sent John Slidell of Louisiana to Mexico to try to settle the 
l)Oundary trouble and to offer to pay all just claims of our 
citizens against Mexico and give that country twenty-five 
million dollars besides, if it would cede California to us. The 
government of Mexico refused to have anything to do with 
Slidell, who wrote that nothing could be done with the Mexicans 
"until they shall have been chastised." 

Failing to get the territory he wanted by peaceful negotia- 
tion the president next tried war. Early in 1846 he ordered 
Cfcneral Taylor to advance with an army to the Rio Grande. War with 
When Taylor obeyed, Mexico warned him to withdraw from the ^^^^^ 
disputed territory. He paid no attention to this warning, and 
a few days later Mexican soldiers crossed the Rio Grande, 
attacked a part of Taylor's force, and killed several men. 
Polk at once informed Congress that Mexico "had invaded our 
territory and shed American blood upon American soil" and 
declared that wai- existed "by the act of Mexico." It would 
have been just as true to have said that war had been provoked 
by the United States. Congress agreed with the president and 
authorized him to wage war against Mexico. 



366 



WINNING OF TEXAS AND FAR WEST 



Taylor's 
campaign 



We seize 
California 



Scott 
captures 
the City 
of Mexico 



The actual fighting in the Mexican War lasted from May, 
1846, until September, 1847. It was marked by skill and daring 
on the part of the officers and men of our army. General 
Zachary Taylor, a plain but capable old soldier whose men 

called him "Old Zack" 
or "Old Rough and Ready", 
fought his way across the 
Rio Grande and invaded 
northeastern Mexico in a 
brilliant campaign in which 
he won every battle. 

Soon after war was de- 
clared another army under 
General Kearney marched 
across the plains and 
I A V / -T V - '• K seized New Mexico. With 

-^-u.w <^'V'sPANisH^RoviNCEV^ a snuill forcc, Kearney 

)OF TfXAS Y 

Os5c^ o,..,; ' ;:^^ 

I'urims Christ! 

^,- ,^ \l';>lo Alto 
Ji R«aca.!kh(-l>i.l!iasifep(. Isabel 
r^(^ SaltiUo, 'i^ J^Iataiuoros 





pushed on to California, 
only to find it already in 
the hands of the Americans. 
There were- a few settlers 
from the United States in 
California in 1846, and be- 
fore they heard that war 
had begun they revolted 
against Mexico and set up a 
little republic of their own 
which was called the "Bear 
State" because of the pic- 
ture of a grizzly bear upon 
its flag. John C. Fremont, 
who was in California at 
this time with an exploring 
party, aided this revolt, and our naval officers seized the towns 
on the Californian coast. 

All the territory which we coveted was now in our posses- 
sion, but Mexico refused to make peace on our terms and it 
was decided to strike at the capital of that country. In 1847 
General Winfield Scott led an expedition against the City of 
Mexico. Scott had won his laurels in the War of 1812. He was 




The Disputed Territory and the Campaigns of 
Taylor and Scott. 



THE RESULTS OF THE MEXICAN WAR 367 



a skilful and confident leader, but so fond of pomp and parade 
that the soldiers called him "Old Fuss and Feathers," Scott 
landed his army at Vera Cruz and marched into the interior 
of Mexico defeating the enemy in every battle. In September 
he stormed and captured the capital of the country. Mexico 
could resist no longer and must accept any terms of peace that 
we proposed. 

The Results of the Mexican War. — With Mexico at our 
mercy most of the members of Polk's cabinet wanted to take 




The Battle of Chapultepec 

all of it, but the president refused to destroy the existence of 
an independent nation by conquest. Early in 1848 he made a Territorial 
treaty of peace with Mexico in which that country agreed that S^i^s 
the Rio Grande should be the southern boundary of Texas and 
ceded New Mexico, California, and all the land between them 
north of the Gila River to the United States. Our country 
agreed on its part to pay the claims of its citizens against 
Mexico and to give Mexico fifteen million dollars for the ceded 
territory. In 1853 we paid Mexico ten million dollars more for 
the strip of land between the Gila River and the present southern 
boundary of Arizona. This acquisition is called the Gadsden 
Purchase from the name of the American agent who bought it. 



368 



WINNING OF TEXAS AND FAR WEST 



A new 
outlook on 
the Pacific 



The breach 
between the 
North and 
the South 
widened 



The years from 1845 to 1848 are very significant in the 
history of the territorial growth of our country. During this 
short period of time we annexed Texas, our largest state, gained 
a clear title to the territory in the far Northwest now com- 
prised in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and conquered the 
enormous Mexican cession which in the course of time was cut 
up to form the large states of California, Nevada, Utah, New 
Mexico, and Arizona. This winning of the Pacific Coast gave 







jThe Territory Acquired from Mexico 

our people a new outlook. They had long faced Europe. 
They now looked toward Asia also and were ready for moi-e 
direct trade with the Orient. 

The war with Mexico increased the growing discord be- 
tween the North and the South. The South hoped that this 
war would result in the making of more slave holding states. 
The North felt more strongly every day that further 
extension of slavery ought to stop. Soon after the war began 
the president asked Congress for money to pay Mexico for the 
land which h(^ meant to take from her. While Congress was 
considering a bill to grant this request, David Wilmot of Penn- 
sylvania moved to amend it by providing that slavery should 
never exist within any territory acquired from Mexico. This 



THE RUSH TO CALIFORNIA 



369 




The Wilmot 
Proviso 



Fighting in Mexican Streets 



Wilmot Proviso, as it was 

called passed the House of 

Representatives, but failed 

in the Senate. The next 

year the House adopted the 

Wilmot Proviso a second 

time and again the Senate 

rejected it. The long and 

bitter discussion of the Wil- 
mot Proviso in Congress 

and in the newspapers only 

deepened the antagonism 

between the North and the 

South and brought the 

nation nearer the verge of 

civil war. At the same 

time the Mexican War 

gave our people reason to 

be proud of their enemy and 

trained the soldiers like Grant, Lee, Sherman, Jackson, and a 

host of others, who were destined to lead the forces of their 

respective sections in the coming conflict. 

The Rush to California. — Only a few days before the treaty 

ending the Mexican War was signed, a man who was digging 

a mill-race for Cap- Gold found 
tain Sutter in the in California 
valley of the Sacra- 
mento River, no- 
ticed some yellow 
grains which proved 
to be gold. The 
news of this dis- 
cover}' spread like 
wildfire, and from 
all parts of Califor- 
nia men hastened to 
the new gold field. 
Farms and shops 
Sutter's Mill ^ere abandoned, 

The discovery of gold ^at^hU mi J kd to the rush of the ^^^ ^^^^OTS deserted 
24 




370 



WINNING OF TEXAS AND FAR WEST 



The "Forty- 
niners" 



the ships that came into San Francisco harbor, and by mid- 
summer four thousand men were in camp along the Sacramento 
washing the gravel in a mad scramble for the precious metal. 

It took news from the Pacific Coast a long time to cross the 
continent in 1848, and that year had nearly passed before the 
most of our people heard that gold had been found in CaHfornia. 
Everywhere the report aroused intense excitement. Many 

people at once decided 
to seek their fortunes in 
the far West. They 
were joined in this quest 
by adventurers from all 
parts of the world. 
"The Forty-niners," as 
the swarm of men who 
went to the Californian 
gold fields in 1849 were 
called, found their jour- 
ney to the golden West 
a dangerous undertak- 
ing. Some of them 
sailed by the long water 
route around Cape 
Horn. Others went by 
sea to the isthmus of 
Panama, made their 
way as best they could 
across that bit of fever 
liaunted country, and 
when opportunity of- 
fered took ship along 
the coast to San Fran- 
cisco, But the majority 
of the gold hunters followed the long trail across the plains 
and through the Rocky Mountains to the distant West. 

The overland journey to California in 1849 was a daring 

The overland adventure. Those who chose this route gathered at starting 

journey points on the Missouri River and thence began their long and 

toilsome march across the continent. They traveled with large 

covered wagons called prairie schooners, and when they were 




A Gold Miner 
Primitive gold mining and washing can be carried 
on with such a small equipment that it can all be 
carried on one packhorse. 



THE RUSH TO CALIFORNIA 



371 



crossing the plains they must have looked like a moving army. 
" In the day their trains filled up the road for miles, and at night 
their campfires glittered in every direction about the places 
blessed by grass and water." The faint-hearted turned back, 
the weak died of hardship and disease and were buried beside 
the trail, but the greater number successfully braved the perils 
of the mountains and the desert and reached the land of their 
desire. 

During 1849 more than eighty thousand persons arrived 
in California. The Sacramento valley was filled with mining 




San Francisco in 1849. 



camps, and San Francisco was rapidly becoming a great city. California 

Many of the "Forty-niners" were rough a.nd lawless men, and seeks 

d-d mi SSI on. 
for a time there was little protection for life and property in into the 

the new gold field. But the better class of citizens organized Union 

into "vigilance committees," punished the criminals, and soon 

established law and order in the new community. Before 1849 

closed they made a state constitution forbidding slavery and 

asked Congress to admit California into the Union. 



372 WINNING OF TEXAS AND FAR WEST 

REFERENCES. 

Sparks, The Expansion of the American People; Garrison, West- 
ward Extension; Texas; Royce, California; Dodd, Expansion and Con- 
jiicl; Schafer, The Pacific Northwest; Coman, Economic Beginnings of 
the Far West^ Paxson, The Last American Frontier; Histories of the 
United States by McMaster, Schouler, Rhodes, and Wilson. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Story of the Alamo. Lodge and Roosevelt, Hero Tales from 
American History, 176-180. 

2. The Acquisition of Texas. Sparks, T'he Expansion of the American 
People, 310-323. 

3. Across the Continent on the Oregon Trail. McMaster, History 
of the People of the United States, VII, 287-288. 

4. Hunting Buffalo on the Plams. Parkman, The Oregon Trail, 
327-338. 

5. A Journey in the Rocky Mountains. Parkman, The Oregon Trail, 
264-279. 

6. Fremont's First Trip to the Rocky Mountains. McMurry, 
Pioneers of the Rocky Mountains and the West, 40-57. 

7. Fremont's Trip to Salt Lake and California. McMin-ry, Pioneers 
of the Rocky Mountains and the West, 60-93. 

8. Polk's Reasons for War with Mexico. Hart, American History 
Told by Contemporaries, IV, 20-23. 

9. A Speech in the Senate denouncing the Mexican War. Hart, 
American History Told by Contemporaries, IV, 24-26. 

10. Taylor's Campaign. McMaster, History of the People of the 
United States, VII, 440-461. 

11. The Conquest of California. Sparks, 77(e Expansion of the Ameri- 
can People, 324-335. 

12. Scott's Campaign. McMaster, History of the People of the United 
States, VII, 505-523. 

13. The Rush to California. McMaster, History of the People of the 
United States, VII, 585-614, or Sparks, The Expansion of the American 
People, 336-350. 

14. The Adventures of a "Forty-niner." Hart, American History Told 
by Contemporaries, IV, 43-48, or McMurry, Pioneers of the Rocky Mountains 
and the West, 99-113., 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 
Poems: Joacjuin Miller, The Defense of the Alamo; Whittier, Texas; 
The Angels of Buena Vista; The Crisis; Lowell, The Biglow Papers; 
Longfellow, Victor Galbraith; O'Hara, The Bivouac of the Dead; Lytle, 
The Volunteers. 



REFERENCES 373 

Stories: Irving, Astoria; Parknian, The Oregon Trail; Atherton, 
The Valiant Runaway; The Splendid Idle Forties; Watts, Nathan Burke; 
Wilson, Lions of the Lord; Barr, Remember the Alamo! Munroe, With 
Crockett and Bouie; -Golden Days of Forty-nine; Caiifield, Diary of a 
Forty-niner; Bret Harte, Luck of Roaring Camp; Talcs of the Argonauts; 
Gabriel Conroy; Bayard Taylor, Eldorado. 

Biographies: Clay, Henry Clay; Roosevelt, Thomas H. Benton; 
Br vice, Life of General Houston; Howard, General Taylor; Wright, General 
Scott. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. For what did the \Miig party stand? What is meant by calling 
Tyler a "State-rights Democrat"? 

2. How did the capital of Texas get its name? How large is Texas? 
What are the chief natural resources of Texas? Of the Oregon country? 
Of California? Were the Texans right in rebelling against Mexico? 

3. Trace on the map the route of the overland trail to Oregon. 

4. Did the antislavery Whigs who refused to yote for Clay in 1844 
act wisely? 

5. Did the United States or England have the better claim to the 
Oregon country? Why? 

6. What is meant by the remai'k, "California was sure to repeat the 
history of Texas"? 

7. Have you ever read any of the Biglow Papers? In what dialect 
are they written? 

8. Did Texas have a just claim to the disputed territory between the 
Nueces and Rio Grande rivers? Which side began the Mexican War? 

9. Trace on a map the boimdaries of the Mexican cession of 1848. 
Of the Gadsden Purchase. Would it have been better for the Mexicans 
if we had annexed all of their country in 1848? Why? 

10. If you had been one of the "Forty-niners" which of the routes to 
Cahfornia would you have chosen? Why? 

11. Name and locate all the additions to our territor}' from 1783 to 
1853. 

12. Question for debate: Resolved, That the conduct of our country in 
engaging in war with Mexico was justified by the facts in the case. 



CHAPTER XIX 

Disunion Delayed by Compromise 

The Slavery Controversy. — Ever since they freed their 

slaves just after the Revolution, the people of the northern 

Shall the states had been anxious to prevent the extension of slavery into 

West be free ^]^g j^g^y lands in the West. In this purpose they had been partly 

territory? successful. The Ordinance of 1787 excluded slavery from all 

the land north of the Ohio River. By the Missouri Compromise 

of 1820 it was forbidden in that part of the Louisiana Purchase 

north of 36° 30' except the state of Missouri. In 1848 it 

was prohibited in the new territory of Oregon. At this time 

the whole country was much agitated over the question whether 

slavery should be permitted or forbidden in the vast region 

just won from Mexico. 

Four answers to this question were suggested and each 
had its ardent adherents. Many northern men believed that 
Four Congress ought to keep slavery out of all the territories of the 

answers to United States. Such men had been earnest supporters of the 
Wilmot Proviso. Most southern men agreed with Calhoun, 
who held that a southern man had just as good a right to take 
his slaves into the territories of the United States as a northern 
man had to take his horses. Some people were in favor of 
making the line of 36° 30' the boundary between slave and 
free territory all the way to the Pacific. This would have divided 
California into two states, one slave and one free. Others 
wanted to leave the question to the decision of the actual 
settlers in each territory concerned, and let them make their 
state slave or free as they pleased. This idea was known as 
"popular sovereignty" and is sometimes called "squatter 
sovereignty." 

The territorial question was not the only bone of conten- 
tion between the North and the South at this time. Many 
Fugitive northern men thought it a shame that slaves were bought 
slaves g^j^(j gQj^^j jj^ ^j^g capital of the nation, and some of them wanted 

to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. The South 
complained that it was very difficult to recover runaway 

374 



THE UNION IN DANGER 375 

slaves who reached the northern states. This was true, 
because the abohtionists had a regular system of helping fugi- 
tive slaves to escape. The agents of the "Underground Rail- 
road," as this sj^stem was called, hid the fugitives in their houses The "Under- 

or in secret places during the day, and at night carried them ground 

. Railroad 

in their wagons to another "station" on the road toward 

Canada. When the runaways reached Canada they were 

safe, because slavery was forbidden by law in all parts of the 

British Empire. 

The presidential election of 1848 was held while the people 
were deeply concerned about the question of slavery in New 
Mexico and California. Neither of the two great parties dared The election 
to take sides upon this question. Each of them had many of 1848 
members in the North and in the South, and it was impossible 
to get the men from both sections to agree about slavery. 
General Zachary Taylor, the popular hero of the Mexican War, 
was nominated for the presidency by the AVliigs. Taylor was 
a Louisiana sugar planter who owned many slaves, but he had 
never urged the extension of slavery in the territories. Lewis 
Cass of Michigan, the Democratic candidate, favored letting 
the people in each territory settle the slavery question for them- 
selves. He hoped that " popular sovereignty " would please the 
Democrats in both sections of the country. Many noi'thern 
antislavery men refused to vote for either Taylor or Cass. 
These men now formed the Free-soil party, declared that they 
favored "free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men," and 
made Martin Van Buren their candidate for the presidency. 
The Whigs won for the second and last time iji their history, 
and on March 4, 1849, Zachary Taylor became president of the 
United States. 

The Union in Danger. — When Congress met in December, 
1849, the continued agitation of the question of the .extension 
of slavery into New Mexico and California had stirred up so The slavery 
much bitter feeling between the North and the South that question 
it could no longer be disguised or denied that the Union was in ^j^g union 
danger. The demands of both sections were being stated with 
a temper which could not be mistaken. 

The legislature of Virginia declared that the exclusion of 
slavery from the new territory would compel the people of that The position 
state to choose between "abject submission to aggression and °* *^® South 



376 DISUNION DELAYED BY COMPROMISE 



The 

attitude 
of the 
North 



outrage" and "determined resistance at all hazards and to the 
last extremity." This sentiment of Virginia was widely 
approved all over the South. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, 
who was soon to succeed Calhoun as the leader of the South, 
called upon every southern man to help maintain the political 
power of his section. Robert Toombs of Georgia said to the 
northern representatives in Congress, "We have a right to call 

on you to give your 
blood to maintain the 
slaves of the South in 
bondage," and added, 
"If you seek to drive 
us from the territories 
of California and New 
Mexico, purchased by 
the common blood and 
treasure of the whole 
people, / am for dis- 
union.'' At a dinner to 
Senator Butler in South 
Carolina, toasts to" Slav- 
ery" and to "A South- 
ern Confederacy" were 
received with wild en- 
thusiasm. 

The people of the 
North were no less out- 
spoken in their demands. 
Nearly all the northern 
legislatures declared that Congress had the power, and that 
it was its duty, to prohibit slavery in the territories. Horace 
Mann spoke for the radical free soil men when he said in Con- 
gress, "Better disunion, better a civil and servile war, better 
anything that God in his providence shall send, than an ex- 
tension of the boundaries of slavery." Representative Baker 
of Illinois declared, "In the name of the men of the North so 
rudely attacked, and speaking what I know to be their senti- 
ments, I say a dissolution of this Union must be, shall be, 
impossible as long as an American heart beats in an Amer- 
ican bosom." 




Zachary Taylor 



CLAY PROPOSES A COMPROMISE 



377 



Clay seeks to 
save the 
Union 



Clay Proposes a Compromise. — In 1849 Henry Clay was 
still the best loved man in America. He had retired from pubhc 
life some years before and was then living quietly on his planta- The peace- 
tion in Kcnitiicky. Clay was seventy-two years old at this time "i^^er 
and broken in health, but when the mutterings of disunion 
were heard, the legislature of Kentucky unanimously elected 
the old peacemaker to 
his former place in the 
Senate. He accepted 
this election as the 
call of duty and re- 
turned to Washington 
to devote his last yearf^ 
to the service of his 
country. 

Clay believed that 
the Union was in peril 
and felt that he was the 
man to save it. He 
thought that the only 
way to avert disunion 
was by compromise, by 
each section giving up a 
part of what it desired. 
"Let me say to the 
North and to the 
South," he said, "what 
husband and wife say 
to each other : we have 
mutual faults; neither of us is perfect; nothing in the form of 
humanity is perfect. Let us then be kind to each other, for- 
bearing, forgiving each other's faults, and above all, let us Uve 
in happiness and peace together." 

In this spirit Clay proposed a series of measures which he 
hoped would bring peace and quiet to the country by removing 
the slaverj^ question from the field of politics. His plan included His 
concessions to both sections. To please the North he proposed measures^^ 
to admit California into the Union as a free state and to abolish 
the slave trade in the District of Columbia. To win the approval 
of the South he wanted to pass a fugitive slave law that would 




Horace Mann 
An educator who spoke for the Free Soil Cause. 



378 DISUNION DELAYED BY COMPROMISE 

make it easier to recover runaway slaves, to pay Texas to give 
up her claim to that part of New Mexico east of the Rio 
Grande River, and then to organize territorial governments in 
the region between Texas and California without saying any- 
thing about slavery. This would leave the settlers in New 
Mexico and Utah to decide the slavery question for themselves. 
A Great Debate in the Senate. — The Compromise of 1850, as 
Clay's plan is called, was debated for months in Congress. The 
The leaders" Senate of that time was a particularly able body of men. Webster, 
in the Senate C'la}^, and Calhoun, who had been the great leaders in American 
politics for forty years, met in it for the last time. Calhoun died 
while the compromise was before Congress, and Webster and 
Clay survived him only two years. William H. Seward of New 
York, Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, and Jefferson Davis of Missis- 
sippi were younger senators who were destined to play a great 
part in the history of their country for the next twenty years. 
All these men and many others in both houses of Congress took 
an active part in the great debate upon the proposed compro- 
mise, but the speeches of Clay, Calhoun, Webster, and Seward 
are worthy of special study because they best express the 
convictions and feelings of the American people at that time. 
Clay, a southern Whig, urged the adoption of the compro- 
mise of which he*was the author in one of the most persuasive 
Clay's plea speeches of his life. In words of moving eloquence he pictured 
for the Union ^^^^ g^^^^ q£ ^^le country, called upon the North and the South 
to make mutual concessions for the sake of peace and harmony, 
and pleaded for the perpetuation of the Union in the hearts of 
the people. Love of the Union was an absorbing passion with 
Henry Clay. "Let us," he said, "think only of our glorious 
Union and swear that we will preserve it." 

Calhoun, a southern Democrat speaking for the proslavery 
men of his section, opposed the compromise with all his might. 
Calhoun "The South," he declared, "asks for justice, simple justice, 

defends the ^^^^ jggg gj^g ought not to take. She has no compromise to 
offer but the Constitution; and no concession or surrender to 
make." "I have," said Calhoun, "believed from the first that 
the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented 
by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion." He 
then went on to declare that the only way in which the Union 
could be saved was for the North to stop talking about the 



A GREAT DEBATE IN THE SENATE 379 

slave question, to return fugitive slaves to their masters, and 
to concede to the people of the South the right to take their 
slaves into all the territories of the United States. 

On the 7th of March, Webster, who was a northern Wliig, 
made what he regarded as the greatest speech of his life in 
support of Clay's compromise. Webster, like Clay, passionately Webster's 
loved the Union, and he was dismayed at the open talk of seces- seventh-of- 
sion. "I speak to-day," he said, "for the preservation of the speech 
Union. 'Hear me for my cause.'" Webster told the men of 
the North that it was unnecessary to prohibit slavery in New 
Mexico because it was alread}- excluded from that region by 
the law of physical geography. He meant that slavery could 
only exist where slaves could profitably be employed in agri- 
culture, and that this would never be the case in the arid regions 
of the Southwest. Webster admitted that the complaints of 
the South about the difficulty of recovering runaway slaves 
were just, and declared that the North had failed to do its duty 
in this matter. He closed with an eloquent plea for the Union. 
Instead of speaking of the possibility of secession he said, "Let 
us enjoy the fresh air of liberty and union. Let us make our 
generation one of the strongest and brightest links in that golden 
chain which is destined, I fondly believe, to grapple the people 
of all the states to this Constitution for ages to come." 

The zealous antislavery men of the North were sorely 
displeased with Webster's seventh-of-March speech. They 
were especially angry at him for scolding them for their failure The anti- 
to return runaway slaves. "By this speech a blow was struck slavery men 
at freedom which no southern arm could have given," said Webster ^ ^ 
one. ''I know no deed in American history done by a son of 
New England to which I can compare this but the act of Bene- 
dict Arnold," declared another. But Whittier best voiced 
the antislavery indignation against Webster when he wrote: 

■'Of all we loved and honored, naught 

Save power remains; 
A fallen angel's pride of thought, 

Still strong in chains. 
All else is gone; from those great eyes 

The soul has fled; 
When faith is lost, when honor dies, 

The man is dead!" 



380 



DISUNION DELAYED BY COMPROMISE 



Seward, the 
spokesman 
of anti- 
slavery 



The 

compromise 
becomes law 



Its terms 



This bitter denunciation of Webster was very unjust. The 
men who uttered it thought that he was trying to curry favor 
with the South in the hope of winning the presidency, but 
patriotic devotion to the Union was his real motive. Webster 
was an old man who did not hate slavery as much as many 
younger men were coming to hate it. The conscience of the 
age had outgrown him. 

Seward, a northern Whig, spoke for the antislavery men. 
He believed that slavery would soon disappear before the 
influences of humanity. "I am," he said, "opposed to any 
such compromise as that proposed because I think it radically 
wrong and essentially vicious." He plainly told the South 
that it was entitled to no more fugitive slave laws and that 
such laws would be useless. "Has any government," he asked, 
"ever succeeded in changing the moral convictions of its 
subjects by force? We cannot be true Christians or real freemen 
if we impose on another a chain that we defy all human power 
to fasten on ourselves." Seward declared that the Constitution 
devotes the territory of the United States to union and to liberty, 
and added, "But there is a higher law than the Constitution 
which devoted it to the same noble purposes." 

The Compromise of 1850 Adopted. — For a long time the 
adoption of Clay's proposed compromise was in doubt. Presi- 
dent Tajdoi- was known to be opposed to it, and there seemed 
little use in passing a measure that he was sure to veto. But 
Taylor died in July, 1850, and Vice-President Fillmore who 
succeeded him was more inclined to favor the measure. Even 
then Congress would not pass the scheme as a whole, but when 
each part of it was voted on separately all were adopted. 

The Compromise of 1850 included the following acts: 

1. The admission of California into the Union as a free 
state. 

2. The fixing of the present boundaric^s of Texas and the 
payment to that state of $10,000,000 for its claim to New 
Mexico. 

3. The organization of the territories of New Mexico and 
Utah without mentioning slavery in them but with the declara- 
tion that when admitted as states they "shall be received into 
the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitutions may 
prescribe at the time of their admission." 



i 



_. 



THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW 



381 



4. The abolition of the slave trade in the District of 
Columbia. 

5. A very strict fugitive slave law which denied to the 
runaway negro the right of trial by jury, punished anyone who 
aided a slave to escape or hindered his arrest, and commanded 
all citizens to help in the return of fugitive slaves if their aid 
were asked by the officers. 

The Compromise of 1850 was a truce, not a real peace 
between the sections, but it is probable that its passage post- 
poned secession for ten 
3^ears. This delay of the 
coming conflict between 
the free states and the 
slave states was a decided 
gain for the cause of the 
Union. Our country 
grew very rapidly in 
population, wealth, and 
power during the decade 
between 1850 and 1860. 
Much the larger part of 
this gain was in the 
North. Thjit section was 
far better able to defend 
the Union in 1860 than 
it would have been ten 
3'ears earlier. 

The Fugitive Slave 
Law. — The adoption of 
the Compromise of 1850 
was hailed with joy by 




Secession 
postponed 



Millard Fillmore 



Both parties 
accept the 

a majority of our people, who hoped that it meant the begin- compromise 
ning of a new era of good feeling in the country. Both of the 
great political parties proclaimed that all the troublesome 
questions growing out of slavery were finally settled. In 1852 
the Whigs said that they deprecated all further agitation of 
the slavery question as dangerous to our peace, and the 
Democrats resolved that they would resist all attempts to 
renew such agitation in Congress or out of it. In the presiden- 
tial election of that year the Whigs made General Winfield Scott 



382 



DISUNION DELAYED BY COMPROMISE 



The 

election of 
1852 



Antislavery 
men 

denounce 
the fugitive 
slave law 



Attempts to 
rescue 
fugitive 
slaves 



their candidate for the presidency, and the Democrats 
nominated Frankhn Pierce of New Hampshire. Pierce was 
elected by a large majority and succeeded Fillmore in 1853. 
But no great moral issue like the slavery question is ever 
filially settled until the right has won. Such questions cannot 
be successfully compromised, as our people very soon dis- 
covered. From the first the new fugitive slave law met a storm 
of opposition in the North. In all parts of that section the 

antislavery men re- 
fused to ob^y it. A 
meeting of citizens in 
Ohio resolved, "That 
any man who in any 
way aids in the execu- 
tion of this law should 
be regarded as false to 
God and totally unfit 
for civilized society." 
A judge in New York 
whose duty it was to 
(niforce the fugitive 
slave law said, "I will 
trample th^t law in the 
dust; and they must 
find another man, if 
there be one, who will 
disgrace himself to do 
this dirty work." Henry 
Ward Beecher, the 
most eloquent preacher 
of the time, maintained 
that returnmg a fugitive slave "comprises every offense it is 
possible for one man to commit against another;" and Emer- 
son, one of our greatest men of letters, said in a pubhc 
meeting, "The fugitive slave law is an act which every one 
of you will break on the earliest occasion." Sentiments 
similar to these were heard in every one of the free states. 

The actions of the antislavery men spoke even louder 
than their words. The Underground Railroad did a larger 
business than ever before, Sometimes runaway slaves were 




Franklin Pierce 



YEARS OF GROWTH 383 

arrested and carried back into slavery, but in manj^ instances 
the enforcement of the law was thwarted and in some cases 
mobs rescued fugitives from their captors. Some of these 
rescue cases were famous. In 1851 a Maryland slave owner 
accompanied by a United States officer tried to arrest a runaway 
slave at Christiana, Pennsylvania. Some of the people in the 
neighborhood rallied to the defense of the slave, and in the 
fight which followed, the owner was killed and the fugitive 
escaped. About the same time a negro named Jerry McHenry 
was arrested as a fugitive from slaver}^ at S>Tacuse, New York. 
That night a mob broke into the coiu't-house in which Jerry 
was confined, carried him away in triumph, and finally sent 
him safely to Canada. In 1854 some people in Boston tried 
to rescue Anthony Burns, a runaway from Virginia who had 
been arrested in that city, but this time the police were too 
strong for the mob and, with the aid of a company of militia, 
Burns was carried back into slavery. 

Many northern people who had no desire to interfere with 
slavery in the South sympathized with the fugitives who had 
fled from bondage and were trying to reach a land of freedom. Growing 
The efforts to return these runaways to their masters only feeling 
strengthened the growing antislavery sentiment in the free slavery 
states. In time this feeling became so strong that some of the 
northern states pas'sed personal liberty laws which made the 
execution of the fugitive slave law still more difficult, by giving 
the runaway the help of a lawyer and the right of trial by a jury. 

The literature which was written in the North during the 
years when the agitation of the slavery question was dividing 
the country into two hostile sections played no small part in 
promoting that movement. Whittier and Lowell poured forth 
their souls in verses of passionate indignation against slavery. 
But Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was the most 
powerful literary force of the antislavery days. This famous literature 
book was published in 1852, and during the next five years 
half a million copies of it were sold in the United States. Its 
northern readers laid it clown with an increased hatred of slav- 
ery. Few books have ever done more to arouse public opinion. 

Years of Growth. — While the agitation of the slavery 
question was the most important movement in our history a period of 
between 1845 and 1861 we must not think that our people rapid growth 



384 DISUNION DELAYED BY COMPROMISE 



The rising 
tide of 
immigration 



Immigrants 
help to 
develop the 
free states 



were absorbed in it all the time. Then, as now, most people 
were interested first of all in their own business affairs. More- 
over, the new-found wealth of the marvelous gold fields of Cali- 
fornia was quickening every line of business. The great mass 
of the people willingly accepted the Compromise of 1850, 
because they were eager to turn from politics to the task of de- 
veloping their farms, opening new mines and factories, inventing 
new machinery, and building now railroads. The years from 1850 
to 1860 were a time of very rapid growth along all these lines. 

Our population, which was seventeen millions in 1840, grew 
to twenty-three millions in 1850 and to thirty-one millions in 
1860. This rapid increase in the number of our people was due 
in part to the large number of immigrants who were flocking to 
the United States from Europe. America has ever been the 
land of hope and promise to the people without a fair chance in 
the Old World. The tide of immigration had long been slowly 
rising. It reached one hundred thousand in a single year, for 
the first time, in 1842. About this time the establishment of 
steamship lines across the Atlantic was making it easier than 
ever before to come to the New World. A terrible famine in 
Ireland in 1846 drove swarms of Irishmen across the sea. 
More than a million of them came to America in the next ten 
years. In 1848 the people of Germany tried to establish a 
free government in that country. They failed in this attempt, 
and during the following years many thousands of freedom- 
loving Germans fled from the tyranny in their own land to 
seek homes in democratic America. The discovery of gold 
on the Pacific Coast, our cheap western lands, and the steady 
demand for laborers in the United States, all helped to stimulate 
immigration b(;tw(Hni 1850 and 1860. 

The Irish inunigrants found employment in the factory 
cities of the East or in building the new railroads whose con- 
struction was being pushed rapidly at this time. Many of 
the German newcomers joined the stream of home seekers 
which was pouring like a flood into the Northwest. Between 
1850 and 1860 the population of Illinois and Wisconsin doubled 
and that of Iowa increased more than threefold. Meanwhile 
the frontier was moving steadily westward. Minnesota became 
a state in 1858 and Kansas in 1861. The more adventurous 
pioneers followed the long trails across the plains and through 



YEARS OF GROWTH 



385 



the mountains to the distant Pacific Coast. California grew 
to be a populous state and Oregon was admitted to the Union 
in 1859. The same year gold was found near Pike's Peak, 
and the eager treasure hunters who rushed thither founded 
the first towns in the territory of Colorado. Nearly all the 
Eui'opean immigrants who came to our country during these 
years of rapid growth settled in the free states. Labor was the 
badge of slavery in the South, and the immigrant who brought 




Emigrants Crossing the Plains 

little with him but his willingness to work naturally went 
where toil was respected and well paid. 

Some people disliked the foreigners who were coming here 
in such large numbers in the early fifties and feared that they 
were a menace to American liberty. Such men formed the The "Know 
"American Party," a secret political society which sought to ^^}}^^^" 
prevent foreigners from being too speedily naturalized and to 
elect only native Americans to office. Because the members 
of this party said "I don't know," when asked anything about 
their purposes or plans, they were called the "Know Nothings." 
The fears of the "Know Nothings" were groundless, and 
although they cast a large vote in one or two elections their 

25 



party 



386 DISUNION DELAYED BY COMPROMISE 



The develop- 
ment of 
industry 



party quickly disappeared. There is no place for a secret 
political society in a free country. 

Our growth in industry during the decade following the 
C'onipromise of 1850 was even more marked than the increase 
of our population. Farming was still the leading occupation 
of our people. The pioneers who were rapidly bringing the 
fertile land of the upper Mississippi valley under the plow 
were raising large and ever-increasing crops of corn and wheat. 
The cotton planters of the Southwest were doing even better 
than the farmers of the Northwest. The cotton crop of the 
South more than doubled between 1850 and 1860. In the 
meantime our maiuifactures were growing faster than our 



New labor- 
saving 
machinery 




From Underwnofl d' Underwood, New York, 
A Big Corn Crop in the Mississippi VaUey 

agriculture. The mining of coal and iron was steadity increas- 
ing. During every year of the fifties our gold miners poured 
$55,000,000 into the world's supply of that precious metal. 
In 1859 the first productive oil well was bored in Pennsylvania. 
This marks the beginning of the great petroleum industry in 
the United States. 

The amazing growth of industry in our countrj^ about the 
middle of the nineteenth century would not have been possible 
without the constant invention of new labor-saving machinery. 
More than twenty thousand new inventions were patented 
between 1850 and 1860 alone. The increased use of grain 
drills, mowers, reapers, horse-rakes, and threshing-machines 
enabled the farmers to cultivate more acres and grow larger 
crops. Even more marked was the wider use of planers, steam 



YEARS OF GROWTH 



387 




hammers, and a great variety of other new or improved 
machines in manufacturing. Among the more notable inven- 
tions just coming into use 
were Ehas Howe's sewing- 
machine, which reHeved 
women from much of the 
drudgery of sewing and 
soon began to be used in 
factories in the making of 
clothing and of all kinds of 
leather goods; Richard M. 
Hoe's revolving printing- 
press, with which news- 
papers and books could be ^ ^"'^ ^^^°^ ^^"^'"^ 
made in larger quantities and at less cost than ever before; 
and Charles Goodyear's process for vulcanizing rubber, which 
made possil^le its use for waterproof shoes and clothing. 

The development 
of the means of trans- 
portation was keeping Changes in 
pace with the growth transporta- 

/. • ij 1 !• tion and 

oi agriculture and oi their 

manufacturing. The influence 
United States had 
more seagoing craft — 
swift clipper ships and 
ocean steamships — 
between 1850 and 1860 
than at any other time 
in its history prior to 
its entrance into the 
Great War in 1917. 
During the same per- 
iod twenty thousand 
miles of new railroad 
was built. The first 
railroads were mostly 
short lines built to 
carry goods to the canals and rivers, but during this decade 
great trunk lines were completed from the upper Mississippi 




Coiirlrsy of the Goodyear Tire and Ruhbir Co. 
Goodyear Discovers the Process of Vulcanizing Rubber 



388 DISUNION DELAYED BY COMPROMISE 



Progress in 

humanity, 

education, 

and 

literature 



valley to the seaports on the Atlantic coast and much of the 
trade that once went down the Mississippi to New Orleans now 
began to follow the railroads to New York, Philadelphia, and 
Baltimore. This weakened the ties which had connected the 
Middle West with the South and helped to bind the East and 
the West more firmly together. 

The progress of our country in the fifties was not limited to 
industry and commerce. In fact, advancement was even more 
conspicuous in what we may call the higher life of the people. 
Orphan children, the aged poor, the insane, and the inmates 
of the prisons were better cared for than ever before. In the 
northern states, public schools for the education of the children 
of all the people were well established by 1860. Congress had 
made large grants of land to the new states in the West to help 
them support free schools. In the South the public school 
system was not so well developed, but there were many good 
academies and colleges in that section. The ten years immedi- 
ately preceding the Civil War have been well called the "golden 
age" of American literature. At that time Bryant, Longfellow, 
Wliittier, Holmes, Lowell, Hawthorne, and Emerson were doing 
their best work. 



REFERENCES. 

Garrison, Westward Extension; Smith, Parties and Slavery; Burgess, 
The Middle Period; Bassett, A Short History of the United States; 
Schouler, History of the United States, Vol. V; McMaster, History of the 
People of the United States, Vol. VIII; Rhodes, History of the United 
States, Vol. I; Siebert, History of the Underground Railroad. 



TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Election- of 1848. Garrison, Westward Extension, 269-284. 

2. The Slavery Issue in 1849. Garrison, Westward Extension, 294-314. 

3. Clay, the Compromiser. Rhodes, History of the United States, 
I, 120-127. 

4. Calhoun's Last Speech. Rhodes, History of the United States, 1, 
127-130. 

5. Webster and His Seventh of March Speech. Rhodes, History of 
the United States, I, 137-161. 

6. Seward Opposes the Compromise. Rhodes, History of the United 
States, 1, 162-168. 



REFERENCES 389 

7. The Fugitive Slave Law. McMaster, History of the People of 
the United States, VIII, 44-48. 

8. On the Underground Railroad. Hart, American History Told by 
Contemporaries, IV, 80-83. 

9. The Story of the Christiana Riot. Hart, Afncrican History Told 
by Contemporaries, IV, 84-87. 

10. The Death of Uncle Tom. Hart, American History Told byCon- 
temporai-ies, TV, 62-65. 

11. The Era of Railroad Building. Smith, Parties and Slavery, 59-74. 

12. Improvements in Agriculture. Thompson, History of the United 
States, 216-225. 

13. Important Agricultural Crops. Thompson, History of the United 
States, 226-229. 

14. The Merchant Marine. Thompson, History of the United States, 
236-239. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Longfellow, LoweU, and Whittier wrote antislavery poems 
during this period. Find as many of them as you can. 

Stories: Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; Kelly, Rhoda of the Under- 
grounds; Trowbridge, Cudjo's Cave; Adams, The Sable Clovd; Hunger- 
ford, The Old Plantation; Ingraham, The Sunny South. 

Biographies: Schurz, Henry Clay; Von Hoist, John C. Calhoun; 
Lodge, Daniel Webster; Lothrop, William H. Seward; McLaughlin, 
Lewis Cass; Hart, Salmon P. Chase. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Trace upon a map the line of 36° 30' across the continent to the 
Pacific. How much of California is north of this line? 

2. What evidence do you find in this chapter that the Union was in 
danger in 1850? 

3. If you had been living in 1850 would you have favored or opposed 
the compromise of that year? Which section really gained more bj^ 
this compromise? '■^'^ 

4. Was it wrong to disobey the fugitive slave law? Give reasons for 
your answer. 

5. Have you any ancestors who came from' either Ireland or Germany 
about 1850? If so, why did they come to America? 

6. What was the first through line of railroad to connect the East and 
the Middle West? What important railroads connect those sections now? 



CHAPTER XX 

Slavery Divides the Union 



The Quarrel Over Slavery Renewed. — In less than four 

years after the statesmen of the country declared that they 

Douglas had finally settled the slavery controversy by the Compromise 

reopens the of 1850 the quarrel over slavery in the territories blazed up 

controversy ^ven more fiercely than before. The rich corn and wheat 

lands west of Missouri 
and Iowa were begin- 
ning to attract set- 
tlers, and it became 
necessary to organize 
territorial govern- 
ments in the vast 
expanse of Indian 
country. Accordingly, 
early in 1854 Stephen 
A. Douglas of Illinois, 
introduced into the 
Senate a bill to create 
the territories of Kan- 
sas and Nebraska. 

Both Kansas and 
Nebraska were north 
of 36° 30', in a region 
from which slavery 
had been excluded by 
the Missouri Compro- 
mise. Great there- 
fore was the surprise 
and greater still the wrath of the people of the North when 
they learned that the Kansas-Nebraska bill proposed the re- 
peal of the Compromise of 1820 and left it to the settlers in 
Kansas and Nebraska to decide whether these territories should 
grow into free states or slave states. Senator Douglas said 
that the right of the people of a territory to make their own 

390 



Why 

Douglas took 
this step 




Stephen A. Douglas 



ttlWM 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 391 

laws about slavery had been recognized in the Compromise 
of 1850. Douglas was ambitious to get the Democratic 
nomination for the presidency in the next election, and with 
that end in view he was eager to win the favor of the Demo- 
crats in both sections of the country. He knew that the 
slaveholders in the South wanted more slave territory. They 
were so anxious to buy Cuba at this time that some of them 
went so far as to declare that it would be right for the 
United States to take that island by force if Spain persisted 
in refusing to sell it to us. Under these circumstances Doug- 
las hoped that he would gain favor in the South by opening 
new territory in the W(^st to slaveholding settlers, and he 
thought that the Democrats in the North could not seriously 
object to his doctrine of "popular sovereignty," because that 
simply meant letting the people of a territory manage their 
own government in their own way. 

The antislavery men in Congress opposed the passage of 
the Kansas-N(4)raska bill with all their might. They showed 
that it would open all the unorganized territory of the country The passage 
to slavery and called it a bold scheme against American libertj^ ^ ^^^ 
Senator Chase of Ohio, who led the free soil men, appealed to Nebraska 
the Senate to defeat the hated bill because it was "a violation bill 
of the plighted faith and solemn compact which our fathers 
made, and which we, their sons, are bound by every sacred 
tie of obligation sacredly to maintain." But in spite of every- 
thing that the friends of freedom could do, Douglas persuaded 
Congress to pass his measure and it became a law in 1854. 

Judged by its consequences the Kansas-Nebraska Act was 
one of the most important laws in our history. It stirred up 
strife between the North and the South as nothing else ever The conse- 
did. The slaveholders were delighted with it. The anti- J^|°^c? °^ 
slavery men were indignant that slave labor was given an 
opportunity to compete with free labor on the prairies of 
the West. The Kansas-Nebraska Act led to civil strife in 
Kansas, destroyed the Whig party, created the Republican 
party, and in the end brought a])out the downfall of the Demo- 
crats. Its passage in 1854 marks the beginning of seven years 
of bitter sectional strife which led straight to the outbreak of 
a great Civil AVar between the North and the South in 1861. 

The Struggle for Kansas. — The first effect of the passage 



I — — 



392 



SLAVERY DIVroES THE UNION 



Both 
sections 
send 

settlers to 
Kansas 



of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to transfer the quarrel over 
slavery from the halls of Congress to the plains of Kansas. 
As the people in that territory were to decide the slavery ques- 
tion for themselves it was clear that the section which sent the 
most settlers to Kansas would win the state. The race for its 
possession began as soon as the act was passed. At first the 
South was confident of victory in this race. Kansas lay directly 
west of the slave state of Missouri, and many Missourians 
promptly moved into it. At the same time a multitude of free 
soil men from the North poured into the new territory. An 



Rival 
govern- 
ments in 
that 
territory 




The Rush into Kansas to Vote 

Emigrant Aid Society was formed in New England to encourage 
free state people to go to Kansas and to supply them with 
money to help them on their way. 

Under these circumstances a clash between the rival 
factions in Kansas was sure to come. Wlien the first election 
was held hundreds of armed men from Missouri came into 
Kansas, seized the voting places, and elected a legislature 
which promptly passed laws to establish and protect slavery 
in the territory. The settlers from the free states refused to 
recognize a government which had been set up by violence and 
fraud, and presently they held a meeting of their own, drew up 
a constitution forbidding slavery, and asked Congress to admit 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 393 

Kansas into the Union as a free state. There were thus two 
rival governments in Kansas each claiming to be the rightful one. 

The bitter feeling between the slave state and the free state 
pioneers in Kansas led to frequent brawls and shooting affrays 
between them, and soon they were practically at war with each Civil strife 
other. Both sides were guilty of robbery and murder. On ^° Kansas 
one occasion the pro-slavery party plundered and burned the 
free soil town of Lawrence. In retaliation for this act John 
Brown, a fanatical anti slavery man, and his followers murdered 
in cold blood five pro-slavery settlers. These lawless acts led 
to a fierce outburst of guerrilla fighting in which bands of 
armed men from both factions roamed over the country burning 
houses and destroying crops. This civil strife in Kansas lasted 
until nearly two hundred lives were lost. In the end the anti- 
slavery men won and made Kansas a free state, but its admis- 
sion into the Union was delayed until 1861. 

In the meantime the struggle for Kansas was causmg the 
quarrel over slavery to rage more fiercely than ever in Congress. 
Many northern members were eager to admit Kansas as a The assault 
free state. The representatives of the South were determmed upon 
that, if admitted at all, Kansas should be brought into the ^"°"^^'" 
Union as a slave state. In 1856 Charles Sumner, a radical 
free soil senator from Massachusetts, made a speech on "The 
Crime against Kansas" in which he attacked the South in the 
most abusive and insulting language. The southern members 
were wild with hiry. Two days later Preston S. Brooks, a 
representative from South Carolina, assaulted Sumner with a 
cane as he sat at his desk in the Senate chamber and beat 
him into insensibility. The people of the South declared that 
Brooks had given Simmer only what he deserved. To the 
antislavery men of the North the assault upon Sumner seemed 
an act of the basest cowardice. 

The struggle for Kansas and the controversy in Congress 
which grew out of it did much to increase the growing discord 
between the slaveholding and the free state sections of the Growing 
Union. The North and the South were steadily becoming discord 
unduly suspicious of each other. The people of the North were mictions ^ 
coming to think that the purpose of the South was to introduce 
slavery into all the territories. On the other hand, the men of 
the South were becoming convinced that the real intention of 



394 SLAVERY DIVIDES THE UNION 

the North was to destroy slavery everywhere in the nation. 
Each side resolved that the other should not accomplish its 
purpose. 

The Beginning of the Republican Party. — The formation 
of the Republican party was a direct result of the passage of 
A new party the Kansas-Nebraska Act. A majority of the southern Whigs 
organized ^j^^ nearly all the Democrats from that section favored the 
passage of this law. All the northern Whigs and many 
northern Democrats voted against it. It was clear that both 
of the great political parties of the time were hopelessly divided 
upon the question of slavery. But the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise and the organization of Kansas and Nebraska 
upon the basis of popular sovereignty made the extension of 
slavery into the territories the burning question of the hour. 
Many men in the fi-ec staters felt the need of a new party to 
oppose the further spread of slavery, and promptly took steps 
to form one. A convention held "under the oaks" at Jackson, 
Michigan, named the new party Republican. Similar meetings 
in other western states approved this name, denounced slavery 
as a moral, social, and political evil, and declared that Congress 
ought to shut it out of all the territories of the United States. 
Within a year the young Republican party grew into a vigorous 
and aggressive organization. 

The new party enlisted in its ranks all the Free Soilers, 
many northern Democrats, and sooner or later nearly all the 
All anti- northern Whigs. It thus fused into one body all the anti- 
slavery men slavery elements in the country. The early Republican leaders 
new party ^^^^ represented the various groups which united to form 
their party. Sumner came from the Free Soilers, Chase had 
been a Democrat, while Seward and Lincoln were old-time 
Whigs. It is to be remembered that this new party was 
sectional. With the exception of a very few in border 
states like Delaware and Maryland, there were no Republicans 
in the South. The Whig party soon disappeared. Many of 
its southern members joined the Democrats, whose party was 
now the only one with members in both sections of the country. 
The Republican party waged its first presidential campaign 
in 1856. In that campaign the Republicans demanded the 
The election exclusion of slavery from the territories and nominated John 
of 1856 Q Fremont for the presidency. Fremont was called the 



THE DRED SCOTT DECISION 



395 



"Pathfinder" because of his splendid service in exploring the 
mountains of the far West. The Democrats approved the 
Kansas-Nebraska Act and named James Buchanan of Penn- 
sylvania as their candidate. The Know Nothings nominateci 
Millard Fillmore. As we have seen, their party was formed 
to oppose foreign influence in American life, but it was now 
largely made up of men who were unwilling to take sides on the 
question of slavery. After a spirited contest the Repu]:)licans 
carried all but four of 
the northern states, but 
these states with a near- 
ly solid South were 
enough to give victory 
to the Democrats and 
made Buchanan presi- 
dent of the United 
States. 

The Dred Scott 
Decision. — Two, days 
after Buchanan's in- 
auguration in 1857 the 
S u J) r e m e Court gave 
its decision in the fam- 
ous ''Dred Scott" case. 
Dred Scott was a negro 
slave in Missouri. His 
owner, who was an army 
surgeon, had taken him 
to the free state of 
Illinois and some time 




The story of 
Dred Scott 



James Buchanan' 



later to a fort in the territory of Minnesota, a region in which 
slavery had l)een prohibited by the Missouri Compromise. 
After two years' residence in this free territory Dred's master 
had brought him back to the slave state of Missouri. Several 
years later Dred Scott became dissatisfied with his treatment as 
a slave and sued for his freedom on the ground that living upon 
free soil had made him a free man. The lower Missouri court in 
which the suit was first tried decided in Dred's favor, but the 
case was appealed from court to court until at last it reached 
the Supreme Court of the United States for final decision. 



306 



SLAVERY DIVIDES THE UNION 



The Dred 

Scott 
decision 
opened all 
the terri- 
tories to 
slavery 



The efifect of 
this famous 
decision 



The 
challenge 



The Supreme Court decided that a negro could not be a 
citizen of the United States and consequently could not bring 
a law suit in its courts. This disposed of the case as far as 
Dred Scott was concerned. But the court went on to say that 
the facts relied upon by Dred Scott to win his freedom had no 
value because Congress had no power to exclude slavery from 
the tei'ritories. This meant that the Missouri Compromise 
of 1820 had always been an unconstitutional law and hence 
without effect. The Dred Scott decision made it very clear 
that negroes had onlj^ such rights as white men were willing to 
give them and that slavery could not lawfully be kept out of 
any territory of the United States. 

The American people have always held their Supreme Court 
in the highest esteem, and its decision in the Dred Scott case 
was accordingly received with high glee by the men of the 
South. "Are you going to respect and obey the decision of our 
highest court?" they tauntingly asked the Republicans, who 
had just banded together to do the very thing which the 
Supreme Court in this decision said that Congress could not 
do, namely, to exclude slavery from the territories. The 
Republicans soon made it plain that they did not respect the 
decision and that they did not intend to let it control their 
political conduct. Their attitude was best expressed by 
Abraham Lincoln, who was soon to be their greatest leader, 
when he said, "We offer no resistance to the Dred Scott decision, 
but we think it is erroneous and we shall do what we can to 
have it overruled." The chief effect of the Dred Scott decision 
in the North was to harden the determination of the anti- 
slavery men to do everything in their power to stop the spread of 
slavery. Instead of finally settling the controversy over slavery 
in the territories, as President Buchanan had said it would, 
the Dred Scott decision only widened the growing breach 
between the North and the South. 

The Debate between Lincoln and Douglas, — In 1858 
Stephen A. Douglas, the author of the Kansas-Nebraska bill 
and the leader of the northern Democrats who believed in 
letting the people of each territory settle the question of slavery 
for themselves, was the candidate of his party for reelection 
to the Senate from Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, a great Illinois 
lawyer who had risen from an early life of extreme poverty on 



DEBATE BETWEEN LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS 397 



the frontier, was selected by the Republicans of his state to run 
against Douglas. Early in the campaign Lincoln challenged 
Douglas to a series of debates throughout the state upon the 
burning question of the hour. The challenge was promptly 
accepted, and the debate which followed lias been called "the 
most momentous speaking duel ever fought upon our conti- 
nent." It was destined to have a far-reaching influence upon 
the nation's history. 

It would be hard to find two men more unlike than the 
rivals in this great contest. "The Little Giant," as the follow- 
ers of Douglas 
called him, was a 
short, broad-shoul- 
dered man of tre- 
mendous force as a 
speaker. He was 
quick to sec the 
point of an argu- 
ment, ready with a 
terse and vigorous 
answer, and won- 
derfully skilled in 
making the worse 
appear the better 
reason. At first 
sight the tall, 

gaunt, and awk- a Lincoln-Douglas Debate 

ward Lincoln seemed no match for the brilliant Douglas, but 
he proved t6 be quite his equal in clear and convincing speech 
and far superior in honest and sincere thought. It has been 
finel}^ said of Lincoln that "he did not seek to say merely the 
thing which was best for the day's debate, but the thing which 
wotild stand the test of time and square itself with eternal 
justice." 

There is no better way to understand what the men of the 
North thought upon the question of slavery less than three 
years before the outbreak of the Civil War than to listen to 
Lincoln and Douglas in this famous debate. They speak not 
for themselves alone but for the Republicans and Democrats 
of the northern states. 




The debaters 
contrasted 



398 



SLAVERY DIVIDES THE UNION 



The 

great issue 



Slavery in 
the terri- 
tories 



Lincoln. — "'A house divided against itself cannot' stand.' 
I believe this government cannot endure permanently half 
slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — 
I do not (^xpect the house to fall — ])ut I do expect it will cease 
to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." 

Douglas. — "In my opinion our government can endure 
forever, divided into free and slave states as our fathers made 
it — each state having the right to prohibit, abolish, or sustain 
slavery, just as it pleases. The Union was established on the 
right of each state to do as it pleased on the question of slavery, 
and every other question, and the various states were not 
allowed to complain of, much less interfere with, the policy 
of their neighbors." 

Lincoln. — "I insist that our fathers did not make this 
nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I 
insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. 
They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew 
of no way to get rid of it at that time. When the fathers of the 
government cut off the source of slavery by the abolition of the 
slave trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from the new 
territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed 
it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it 
was in the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge 
Douglas asks me why it cannot continue as our fathers made it, 
I ask him why he and his friends could not let it remain as our 
fathers made it?" 

In the debate at Freeport, in reply to a question from 
Douglas, Lincoln said, "I am pledged to a belief in the right 
and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United 
States territories." He then asked Douglas the following 
question: "Can the people of a United States territory in any 
lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, 
exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a 
state constitution?" 

Douglas. — "In my opinion the people of a territory can, 
by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the 
forrnation of a state constitution. Slavery cannot exist a day 
or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police 
regulations. If the people are opposed to slavery they will 
elect representatives to the local legislature who will, by un- 



DEBATE BETWEEN LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS 399 

friendly legislation, effectually prevent the introduction of it 
into their midst." 

Lincoln. — "I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as 
any abolitionist. 1 contemplate; slavery as a moral, social, and 
pohtical evil, and desire a policy that looks to the prevention Attitude 
of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when, as a toward 
wrong, it may come to an end." 

Douglas.—" It is none of our business whether slavery 
exists in Missouii or not. I do not discuss the morals of the 
people of the slaveholding states. It is for them to decide the 
moral and religious right of the slavery question for themselves 
within their own limits. I do not believe that the Almighty 
ever intended the negro to be the equal of the white man. He 
belongs to an inferior race and must always occupy an inferior 
position. I do not hold that because the negro is our inferior 
therefore he ought to be a slave. The negro should have every 
right consistent with the safety of the society in which he hves. 
What rights are consistent with the public good? This is a ques- 
tion which each state or each territory must decide for itself." 

Lincoln. — "There is a physical difference between the 
white and black races which, in my judgment, will probably 
forever forbid their living together upon a footing of perfect The rights of 
equality. But there is no reason in the world why, the negro *^® negro 
is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the 
Declaration of Independence— the right to life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is not my equal in 
color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowments. But 
in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody 
else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal 
of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." 

This debate between Lincoln and Douglas marks an 
epoch in the history of American politics. Douglas won the 
election and returned to the Senate stronger than ever with The impor- 
the Democrats of the North. But he lost the support of the *^*^® °^ *^^ 
South when he answered Lincoln's question at Freeport. The 
slaveholders believed that it was the duty of Congress to 
protect slavery in the territories, and the popular sovereignty 
idea urged by Douglas was becoming almost as distasteful to 
them as the Republican hostility to slavery extension. Without 
the support of the South Douglas could never be president. 



400 



SLAVERY DIVIDES THE UNION 



Lincoln was sorely disappointed by his defeat. With his 
quaint wit he said that he felt "like the boy that stumped his 
toe — it hurt too bad to laugh, and he was too big to cry." 
But out of this seeming defeat came Lincoln's real triumph. 
His debate with Douglas won him the leadership of the Repub- 
lican party and made possible his nomination and election to 
the presidency two years later. 




the raid 



© Keystone View Co., Meadville, Pennsylvania. 
John Brown's Fort, Harper's Ferry, West Virginia 

John Brown's Raid at Harper's Ferry. — In October, 1859, 
the country was startled by the report that the United States 
The story of arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, had been captured by a 
band of men who sought to incite an uprising of the slaves. 
In a day or two the news came that the attempt had failed, 
and that nearly all the men engaged in it had been killed or 
captured. John Brown, the ruthless antislavery fighter whom 
we have met in Kansas, was the leader in this harebrained plot. 
Brown was a stern old Puritan who had dreamed for years of 
liberating the slaves. It seems to have been his plan to seize 



JOHN BROWN'S RAID 401 

the arsenal in order to secure arms, and then to free the slaves 
in the neighborhood and take them to some stronghold in the 
near-by mountains from which raids could be made to rescue 
more slaves. He seized the arsenal without opposition and 
made prisoners of some of the citizens of the vicinity, but the 
people quickly rallied, the militia was called out, and in a few 
hours Brown was besieged in the building which he had taken. 
The next morning a company of marines broke in the door 
and captured Brown and his few surviving followers. He was 
promptly tried, convicted of murder and treason against 
Virginia, and hanged. 

In the North there was every shade of opinion about the 
raid at Harper's Ferry. Many agreed with Douglas, who 
called Brown "A notorious man who had recently suffered Northern 
death for his crimes." To the abolitionists, on the other hand, j^if*"^ °^ 
John Brown was a hero and a martyr. Emerson called him a 
romantic character living to ideal ends. Garrison declared that 
"John Brown is as deserving of high-wrought eulogy as any man 
who ever wielded sword or battle-ax in the cause of liberty." 
Most of the antislavery men in the North thought Brown's 
act ill-advised and foolish, ])ut they sympathized with his spirit 
and could not help admiring the fortitude with which he met 
his fate. Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, 
the most influential Republican paper in the country, wrote 
of Brown and his men, "They dared and died for what they 
believed to be right, though in a manner which seems to us 
fatally wrong." Perhaps the good Quaker poet, Whittier, best 
expressed this feeling about John Brown in these lines: 

"Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil good! 
Long live the generous purpose unstained with human blood! 
Not the raid of midnight terror, but the thought which underhes; 
Not the borderer's pride of daring, but the Christian's sacrifice." 

The people of the South heard of the raid at Harper's 
Ferry with horror and burning indignation. John Brown has 
"whetted knives of butchery for our mothers, sisters, daughters, The anger of 
and babes," said the governor of Virginia. Jefferson Davis the South 
called Brown's act, "The invasion of a state by a murderous 
gang of abolitionists who came to incite slaves to murder 
helpless women and children." The northern approval of 
26 



402 



SLAVERY DIVIDES THE UNION 



The growth 
of disunion 



Slavery 
splits the 
Democratic 
party 



The Consti- 
tutional 
Union Party 



Brown's conduct further enraged the South. Many southern 
men who had not favored secession in the past now began to 
question whether it was possible for the people of their section 
to live much longer with safety in the Union. Such was the 
state of mind in which our people came to the most fateful 
presidential election in their history. 

The Election of 1860. — "Disunion," Calhoun had once 
declared, "must be the work of time. The cords which bind 
the states together in one common Union are too numerous 
and too powerful to be broken by a single blow." By 1860 the 
long-continued agitation of the slavery question had snapped 
most of these cords and weakened all the rest. It had divided 
nearly all the churches into northern and southern branches. 
It had swept away all national political parties except the 
Democratic, and at last the time had come when that party 
too was to split upon the rock of slavery. 

The Democratic National Convention of 1860 met in 
Charleston, South Carolina, the hotbed of disunion. The 
northern members of this convention stood squarely by the 
doctrine of popular sovereignty, but said that they were willing 
to abide by the Dred Scott decision. The men from the South 
wanted the convention to declare that no territorial legislature 
could take away from any citizen of the United States the right 
to take his slaves into that territory. They also demanded that 
Congress protect slave property in all the territories. In other 
words, the southern Democrats asked the northern Democrats 
to say that slavery was right and ought to be extended. When 
the northern men answered firmly, "We will not do it," the 
delegates from several of the southern states withdrew from the 
hall. Both factions held later meetings, at which the northern 
Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for the 
presidency and the southern Democrats named John C. 
Breckenridge of Kentucky as their candidate. 

In the meantime a large body of citizens, who hesitated to 
take sides on the question of slavery and who wanted to cry 
peace, peace, when there was no peace, organized the Constitu- 
tional Union Party. They declared that they stood for "the 
Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the 
enforcement of the laws," and nominated John Bell of Tennessee 
for the presidency. 



THE COMING OF DISUNION 403 

The Republican Convention met in Chicago in a great 
"Wigwam" which held ten thousand spectators. In emphatic 
language this convention denied "the authority of Congress, The 
of a territorial legislature or of any individual,' to give legal nomination 
existence to slavery in any territory of the United States." 
William H. Seward and Abraham Lincoln were the leading 
candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, and 
after a spirited contest, Lincoln was chosen on the third ballot. 
Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was nominated for the vice-presi- 
dency. 

There were thus four political parties contending for the 
presidencj' in 1860. Each of them had stated its position upon 
the great issue of the time in the plainest terms. The Repub- Party 
licans said that slavery must be excluded from the territories, positions 
The southern Democrats were equally positive in declaring j^ t^e terri- 
that Congress must protect it in them. The northern Demo- tories 
crats wanted to let the settlers in each territory decide the 
matter for themselves. The men who voted the Constitutional 
Union ticket dodged the question altogether. 

The Republicans carried on their campaign in 1860 with 
great enthusiasm. They organized marching clubs, called 
"Wide-awakes," whose members carried torches in great Lincoln 
Lincoln demonstrations. Lincoln's early frontier occupation elected 
of rail-splitter was glorified, and men carried fence rails in every 
procession. The cotton states threatened to secede if Lincoln 
were elected, but the Republicans refused to be frightened by 
these threats. They felt that they were fighting the good fight 
for human freedom, and they knew that the split in the Demo- 
cratic party brought victory within their grasp. The result 
on election day proved that their confidence was well founded. 
While the combined popular vote for the other candidates 
exceeded his by nearly a million, Lincoln received more electoral 
votes than all of themx and was elected. 

The Coming of Disunion. — The free North had spoken 
in the election of Lincoln. It declared that there must be no 
more slave territories and hence no more slave states. The South 
answer of the South came promptly. The southern threats of Carolina 
secession in the event of Lincoln's election were not mere idle ^^*^® ®^ 
words. As soon as the result of the election was known. South 
Carolina called a state convention. On December 20, 1860, 



404 



SLAVERY DIVIDES THE UNION 



The Con- 
federate 
States of 
America 



A time of 
hesitation 



this convention passed an ordinance of secession declaring that 
"the union hitherto existing between South Carohna and the 
other states is hereby dissolved." Disunion, so long threat- 
ened, had come at last. 

The cotton-growing states of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, 
Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas promptly followed where 
South Carolina led the way. These states quickly seceded 
from the Union and then sent representatives to Montgomery, 

Alabama, to form a new 
confederacy. The con- 
stitution of the Confed- 
erate States of America, 
as the new union was 
called, was similar in 
most respects to the Con- 
stitution of the United 
States, but it safeguarded 
negro slavery and for- 
bade the passage of pro- 
tective tariff laws. Jeffer- 
son Davis was chosen 
president of the Confed- 
erate States, and Alex- 
ander H. Stephens of 
Georgia was made vice- 
president. 

While the seven cot- 
ton states were leaving 
the Union and forming 
a new nation, the rest 
of the country was hesitating between two opinions. The 
people in the remaining slave states loved the Union, but most 
of them loved their own states more and had been taught to 
believe that the highest duty of the citizen was to stand by his 
own state. Some northern men like Horace Greeley, the editor 
of the New York Tribune, were willing to let the seceding states 
go in peace. But most people in the North had learned to 
believe with Webster in a Union, "one and inseparable." They 
felt that all men must be loyal first of all to the United States, 
afterward to their own states. To men who cherished this 




Jefferson Davis 
President of the Confederate States 



REFERENCES 405 

strong national sentiment, secession was treason, and the 
people of the seceding states were in rebellion against the gov- 
ernment of their country. President Buchanan denied that a 
state had a right to secede, but declared that if it did he had 
no authority to compel it to stay in the Union against its will. 
Many Union-loving men were disgusted with Buchanan's weak 
attitude and often said, "0, for one hour of Andrew Jackson!" 
Congress spent much time during this winter of hesitation 
in discussing various plans for a compromise. Moderate men 
in both sections believed that the Union had been saved by Last efforts 
compromise in 1850 and hoped this might be true again. But to.compro- 
neither the ardent secessionists on the one hand nor the tri- 
umphant Republicans on the other were in any mood to yield 
anything, and all the efforts to compromise came to nothing. 
On March 4, 1861, Lincoln became president of a divided 
country. 

REFERENCES. 

Wilson, Division and Reunion; Burgess, The Middle Period; Rhodes, 
History of the United States, Vols. I-II; McMaster, History of the People 
of the United States, Vol. VIII; Schouler, History of the United States, 
Vol. V; Smith, Parties and Slavery; Chadwick, The Causes of the Ciml 
War; Spring, Kansas. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Old Leaders and the New. Smith, Parties and Slavery, 40-58. 

2. A Debate on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Rhodes, History of the 
United States, I, 444-452. 

3. Emigration to Kansas. Hart, American History Told by Contem- 
poraries, IV, 104-114. 

.4. Civil War in Kansas. Hart, American History Told by Contem- 
poraries, IV, 114-118. 

5. The Beginning of the Republican Party. Rhodes, History of the 
United States, II, 45-50. 

6. "The Crime against Kansas." Rhodes, History of the United 
States, II, 131-141. 

7.-!,The Dred Scott Decision. Hart, American History Told by Con- 
temporaries, IV, 126-131. 

8. The Debates between Lincoln and Douglas. McMaster, History 
of the People of the United States, VIII, 325-337. 

9. John Brown's Raid at Harper's Ferry. Rhodes, History of the 
United States, II, 384-416. 



406 SLAVERY DIVIDES THE UNION 

10. Why John Brown Broke the Laws. Hart, American History Told 
by Contemporaries, IV, 147-150. 

11. The Election of 1860. Rhodes, History of the United States, II, 
440-502. 

12. The Right and Wrong of Secession. Hart, American History Told 
by Contemporaries, IV, 169-178. 

13. The Last Effort at Compromise. Hart, American History Told by 
Contemporaries, IV, 204-210. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Whittier, The Kansas Emigrants; Broivn of Osaivotomie; 
Stedman, How Old Brown Took Harper's Ferry; Holmes, Brother 
Jonathan's Lament for Sister Caroline. 

Novels: Tourgee, Hot Ploivshares; Eggleston, Dorothy South; Two 
Gentlemen of Virginia; Conway, Pine and Palm; Dupuy, The Planter's 
Daughter; Harris, Free Joe. 

Reminiscences: Clayton, Black and White under the Old Regime; 
Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War; Wise, The End of an Era. 

Biographies: Johnson, Stephen A. Douglas; Morse, Abraham Lin- 
coln; Storey, Charles Sumner; Villard, John Brown. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. What is meant by "popular sovereignty"? Was it a wise plan for 
settling the question of slavery in the territories? Wliy? 

2. What is your opinion of the assault upon Sumner? 

3. Who was chief justice of the Supreme Court at the time of the 
Dred Scott decision? Who is chief Justice now? How did the Dred 
Scott decision help to widen the breach between the sections? 

4. What did Lincoln mean by "A house divided against itself cannot 
stand"? 

5. Judging by the extracts from their speeches in this chapter, was 
Lincoln or Douglas the better debater? Give reasons for your opinion. 
What was the "Freeport (Question"? Why did Douglas lose the support 
of the South when he answered this question? 

6. Do you admire John Brown? Why? How would you have voted 
in 1860? Why? 

7. What did men mean when they said, during the winter of 1860-61, 
"O, for one hour of Andrew Jackson"? 

8. Make a list of all the events which helped to widen the breach 
between the North and the South, mentioned in this chapter. What were 
the real causes of secession? 



CHAPTER XXI 
The Civil War 



The North and the South at War. — In his inaugural address 
President Lincoln declared that "no state upon its own mere 
motion, can lawfully get out of the Union"; and added, "I shall Lincoln's 
take care that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in appeal for 
aU the states." Lincoln closed this nol^le address with a touching P^^*^® 
appeal for peace. "We are not enemies," he said, "but friends. 
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, 











Fort Sumter 
"The attack on Fort Sumter roused and united the North Uke a bugle call." 

it must not break our bonds of affection. The mj^stic cords of 
memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to 
every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, 
will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as 
surely they will be, by the ]:)ctter angels of our nature." 

But the Confederate leaders were in no mood to listen to 
this appeal. It was evident that any attempt to enforce the 
laws of the United States in the seceded states would mean The attack 
war. The first blow was struck at Fort Sumter in Charleston Sumter^^ 
harbor. The Confederacy was eager to possess the forts and 

407 



408 



THE CIVIL WAR 



The call to 
arms 



The border 
states are 
kept in the 
Union 



other property of the United States within its borders. It 
occupied some of them, but Fort Sumter was still held by 
United States troops under Major Robert Anderson. It was 
known that Major Anderson could not hold out much longer 
without supplies. When they heard that the government at 
Washington was sending these supplies the Confederates opened 
fire on Fort Sumter. For thirty-four hours a hail of shot and 
shell fell upon the doomed stronghold. With the fort in ruins 
and his ammunition exhausted, Major Anderson surrendered 
and was permitted to withdraw with his men. 

The attack on Fort Sumter roused and united the North 
like a bugle call. On April 15th Lincoln asked for seventy-five 
thousand men to maintain the Union. It would have been 
quite as easy to enlist several times that number. Soon the land 
was filled with the sound of preparation for war. The call of 
President Davis for one hundred thousand volunteers to defend 
the South met the same eager response. Compelled to choose 
between fighting for or against their southern neighbors, 
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas quickly 
seceded and joined the Confederacy. The southern capital 
was then moved from Montgomery to Richmond. 

The border slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, 
and Missouri halted between two opinions. Delaware's business 
relations were chiefly with the North and she had little inclina- 
tion to leave the Union. Eastern Maryland, like Virginia in 
its life and industry, sympathized with the South, but the 
western part of that state, like Pennsylvania in its physical 
geography, had no desire to secede. As Maryland was early 
occupied by Union troops hurrying to the defense of Washington 
she had no opportunity to withdraw from the U^nion even if a 
majority of her people had favored such a course. The western 
counties of Virginia were far more like the neighboring section of 
Ohio than they were like Virginia east of the mountains, and 
their people refused to follow the rest of the Virginians into the 
Confederacy. During the summer of 1861 the Confederates 
were driven from this region by Union forces under General 
McClellan, and two years later it was made the state of West 
Virginia. Eastern Kentucky, with its rugged country, small 
farms, and few slaves, was loyal to the Union. Western Ken- 
tucky with its tobacco plantations worked by slave labor, 



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THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH AT WAR 409 




and the 

South 

compared 



inclined toward the Confederacy. In the end a majority of the 
Kentuckians decided against secession. Missouri was also 
divided in sentiment and both factions took up arms. After 
some hard fighting, the Union element prevailed and drove the 
Confederate forces from the state. While the border states 
were thus all held in the Union, it must not be overlooked that 
many of tlieir citizens served in the southern armies. 

Neither side was prepared for war in 1861, but the North 
possessed certain marked advantages over the South. There 
were four times as many white men in the states that were loyal The North 
to the Union as in those 
that formed the Confeder- 
acy. The South was largely 
dependent upon agricul- 
ture, and the prosperity of 
its agriculture was chiefly 
, due to the cotton crop. It 
possessed few mills and 
factories and imported 
nearly all its manufactured 
goods from the North or 
from Europe. The North 
was rich in corn, wheat, 
coal, and iron. It pos- 
sessed a highly developed 
industrial life. It was a 
land of farms, mills, and 
factories; and it numbered 
among its inhabitants a 

multitude of skilled workmen. The North had more and better 
railroads than the South and was in control of nearly all the 
shipping of the nation. These advantages of the North were 
offset in some measure by the facts that the larger part of the 
men of the South were accustomed to the use of firearms and 
to living an outdoor life, and that they were fighting near home 
upon ground with which they were familiar. The fact that the 
work of the South was done by slaves enabled the Confederacy 
to put nearly all its white men of military age into the army, 
while in the North large numbers of men must stay at home to 
work the farms, mines, and factories. But where both sides were 



The Confederate Flag 



410 



THE CIVIL WAR 



The 
blockade 



equal in courage and in patriotic devotion, the larger numbers 
and greater resources of the North were sure to win in the end. 

The Work of the Navy. — The southern leaders knew that 
their section produced the bulk of the world's supply of cotton. 
They hoped to exchange their cotton in Europe for the military 
stores which they could not make at home. It was of vital 
importance to the cause of the Union to prevent this trade. 
"VVTien the war began, President Lincoln proclaimed a blockade 
of the coast of the Confederacy and used the navy to enforce 
it. Day and night for four years the blockading vessels watched 
the southern harbors to prevent any ship from entering or leav- 
ing them. At first it was impossible to stop all traffic, and occa- 
sionally a swift blockade runner would escape with a cargo of 
cotton or run into a southern port with a load of sorely needed 
supplies. But as time passed and more ships were added to 
the navy, it became increasingly difficult to enter or to leave 
the southern states by sea. The blockade played a verj^ 
important part in the ultimate downfall of the Confederacy. 

Late in 1861 the United States was brought to the verge 
of war with England. When Mason and Slidell, the representa- 
tives of the Confederate States to England and France, escaped 
to the West Indies on a blockade runner and thence sought to 
make their way to Europe on the British mailship, Trent, 
they were seizc^l by Captain Wilkes of the American warship, 
San Jacinto, and brought back to the United States. At first 
the North was jubilant over this act. Great Britain was indig- 
nant. She demanded the return of Mason and Slidell and began 
to prepare for war. President Lincoln said that the searching 
of our ships was one of the causes of the War of 1812, and 
that we must not do unto others what we would not have them 
do to us. The Confederate agents were given up and war with 
Great Britain was averted. 

Throughout our Civil War there was much sympathy for 

the South in England, especially among the upper classes and 

The attitude the manufacturers and merchants who needed cotton and hoped 

of England f^^y ^ good market for English goods in the Confederacy. But 

when th(^ common people of (^ireat Britain saw clearly that the 

South fought to preserv(> slavery, they wished the North to win. 

Early in 1862 the South tried to break the blockade of her 
ports by building an ironclad vessel to destroy the wooden 



The Trent 
affair 



THE WORK OF THE NAVY 



411 



Merrimac 



ships of the blockading fleet. For this purpose she raised the The work 
Merrimac, a ship which had been sunk at Norfolk before the °t-_^l 
Confederates seized that city, covered her with a roof of iron, 
and armed her with heavy guns. On March 8th this dangerous 
craft attacked the Union fleet in Hampton Roads, sunk the 
Cumberland, and Inn-ned the Congress. The remaining wooden 
ships were in deadly peril, and men feared that the strange 
ironclad might even steam up the Potomac and bombard 
Washington. 

But when the Menimac retui-ned on the following morning 
to finish her work of destruction she was met by the Monitor, 




The Battle b( twt ( n the Monitor and the Merrimac in Hampton Roads 



a new ironclad invented by John Ericsson, which had reached The Monitor 
the scene just in time to save the Union fleet. The Monitor ^^'^ *^^ 

IrlCTTlTTlQC 

was a queer looking little craft, aptly called "a cheese box on a 
raft." The cheese box was really an armored revolving turret 
in which were two heavy guns. The little Monitor fought the 
Merrimac to a standstill and sent her back to Norfolk, where 
she was later blown up by the Confederates to prevent her 
capture. This fight revealed how powerless wooden warships 
were before the new ironclads. Soon all the great powers began to 
replace their old-time wooden navies with modern armored ships. 



412 THE CIVIL WAR 

Besides blockading the Confederate ports the Union navy 

assisted in mihtary operations along the southern coast and 

The Con- on the western rivers. It also had its work cut out for it in 

federate hunting down the swift Confederate cruisers, which inflicted 

cruisers 

great damage on the commerce of the United States. The 

most dangerous of these commerce destroyers was the Alabama, 
a ship built in England for the Confederacy. After an eventful 
career in which she destroyed nearly seventy merchant vessels 
the Alabama was at last brought to ])ay at Cherbourg, France, 
and sunk by the United States ship Kearsarge, in a famous 
fight off that port. 

"On to Richmond!" — At Lincoln's first call for troops the 
militia of the North hurried to the defense of the national capital. 
The military But the North could not win the war by merely acting on the 
North ° ^ defensive. It must invade the South and defeat its arniies 
before it could hope to restore the Union. The Confederacy, 
on the other hand, had only to repel the invading armies of the 
Union in order to maintain its independence. These facts 
largely determined the nature of the war. 

When summer came in 1861 the whole North rang with 
the cry, "On to Richmond!" In July Lincoln ordered General 
The McDowell, who commanded the Union army at Washington, 

campaien ^^^ advance on the Confederate capital. About thirty miles 
south of Washington, McDowell met the Confederates under 
General Beauregard and began the battle of Bull Run. Both 
sides fought bravely for several hours, but when reinforcements 
joined the Confederates in the afternoon, the raw northern 
troops suddenly became panic-stricken and fled in wild con- 
fusion back to Washington. The Confederates were almost as 
badly disorganized by victory as the Federals were by defeat 
and made little attempt to pursue their fleeing enemies. The 
battle of Bull Run made the South confident of final success 
and taught the North that it faced a long and trying war. 

The government of the United States now began in earnest 
to get ready for the gigantic struggle before it. Congress 
Both sides voted to raise an army of half a million men, and Lincoln 
prepare for a called General McClellan from his early successes in western 
Virginia to command the troops around Washington. In the 
meantime the southern people were also preparing for the 
coming contest with energy and enthusiasm. In the autumn 



"ON TO RICHMOND!" 



413 



of 1861 the people of the North again clamored for an advance 
on Richmond, but McClellan, who knew the difficulty of the 
task before him, refused to move and spent the entire winter in 
organizing and drilling his army. 

In the spring of 1862 McClellan was ready to begin his 
campaign. A glance at the map of Virginia will show that he 
might have tried to advance across the country from Washington McClellan's 
toward Richmond or to take his army by sea to Fortress Mon- campaign 
roe at the mouth of the James River and thence move up pem^^sula 
the Peninsula between the 
James and York rivers. 
He chose the latter route 
because it gave him the 
support of the navy and 
made it easy to bring up 
his supplies by water. This 
plan made it necessary to 
leave a strong Union force 
imder McDowell to defend 
Washington. Union troops 
under Banks and Fremont 
were also stationed in the 
Shenandoah Valley to pre- 
vent the Confederates from 
approaching Washington 
from that direction. The 
Confederates in front of 
McClellan delayed his ad- 
vance as long as they could, 

but he slowly made his way up the Peninsula until he was 
within a few miles of Richmond. Here he waited for the 
arrival of McDowell, who was now advancing across the country, 
to join him. During this delay a part of McClellan's army was 
attacked by the Confederates, and the bloody but indecisive 
battle of Seven Pines was fought. Joseph E. Johnston, the 
Confederate leader, was seriously wounded in this battle, and 
Robert E. Lee, the greatest of southern generals, henceforth 
commanded the Confederate army. 

In the meantime "Stonewall" Jackson, another brilliant 
soldier of the South, was carrying on a whirlwind campaign 




Court, Mf af ihf F. Gutekunst Co., PlUla., Pa. 
General "Stonewall" Jackson 



414 



THE CIVIL WAR 



Stonewall in the Shenandoah Valley, in which he drove the Union forces 

th^^ihen^ - ^'^^^ towards the Potomac and threatened Washington from 

doah Valley Harppr's Fen-y. Alarmed for the safety of the Federal capital, 

Lincoln stopped McDowell's advance toward Richmond and 

sent him to the Shenandoah Valley to oppose Jackson. This 




The Eastern Campaigns of the Civil War 

was just what Jackson wanted. Having prevented McDowell 

The Seven from joining McClellan, he slipped away from the Union forces 

Days' battle dosing in upon him, and hurried to rejoin Lee near Richmond. 

Richmond ^^^ then promptly attacked the Union army in front of him 

and in seven days of furious fighting forced it back to the 

James River, twenty miles below Richmond. McClellan con- 



"ON TO RICHMOND!' 



415 



ducted this retreat with great skill and on the last day his men 
repulsed the Confederates with heavy loss at Malvern Hill. 

The authorities in Washington now united all the Union 
troops in northern Virginia into one army under General Pope. 
They next decided to withdraw McClellan's army from the The second 
Peninsula. McClellan protested in vain against this order. -^"^^ ^^^ 
Lee was quick to seize the opportunity to defeat Pope before 
all of IMcClellan's men could join him and promptly marched 
northward. In the campaign which followed Lee was greatly 



campaign 




A Charge at Antietam 

aided by the daring and skill of "Stonewall" Jackson. During 
the last days of August, 1862, Pope was disastrously defeated at 
the second battle of Bull Run and retreated to Washington. 
McClellan, with the last of his army, reached the capital al)out 
the same time. 

Lee now resolved to carry the war into the North. He 
believed that the people of Maryland were at heart loyal to 
the South, and his soldiers crossed the Potomac singing, "Mary- Lee's first 
land. My Maryland." The Confederates were' disappointed at ^^''^i^^"^^ 
their reception. The Maryland farmers did not prove quite so f^jig at 
friendly as they expected. In the meantime McClellan was put Antietam 
in command of all the Union troops around Washington, and 



416 



THE CIVIL WAR 



Bumside's 
advance on 
Richmond 
fails at 
Fredericks- 
burg 



Hooker's 
defeat at 
Chancellors- 
ville 



The war in 
the West 



started in pursuit of Lee. On September 17, 1862, the two 
armies fought at Antietam the bloodiest single day's battle of 
the entire war. The Union troops were repulsed on the field, 
but Lee's invasion of the North was checked, and he leisurely 
made his way back to Virginia. McClellan failed to pursue 
him vigorously and was soon ordered to hand over the com- 
mand of the Army of the Potomac to General Burnside. 

In December, 1862, Burnside led the Union army in a third 
advance on Richmond. He found the Confederates in a very 
strong position behind the Rappahannock River at Fredericks- 
burg. Burnside built pontoon bridges across the river under 
fire, marched his army across them, and attempted to storm 
the hills on whose crests Lee had posted his men. Time after 
time the Union troops rushed to the charge with the utmost 
bravery, but every assault was beaten back with awful slaughter. 
At last, Burnside saw that victory was impossible and withdrew 
his army. Thus 1862 closed in Virginia with the Union army 
under the gloom of a bloody defeat. 

During the winter, General Hooker — "Fighting Joe" 
Hooker, as the soldiers called him — replaced Burnside in com- 
mand of the army. Early in 1863 Hooker crossed the Rappa- 
hannock above Fredericksburg and fought a great battle at 
Chancellorsville in the early days of May. Again the daring 
of "Stonewall" Jackson helped Lee to win a splendid victory, but 
it was dearly paid for in the death of this peerless soldier who 
was shot by mistake by his own men. After the battle Hooker 
withdrew north of the Rappahannock. Like McDowell, 
McClellan, and Burnside before him, he had failed to go "On 
to Richmond." 

Opening the Mississippi. — The Appalachian mountain sys- 
tem divides the field of the Civil War into two parts, Virginia in 
the East, and the lower Mississippi Valley in the West. We must 
now see what was happening in the West while the army of 
the Potomac was vainly striving to capture Richmond. During 
the first two years of the war a large part of the Union effort 
west of the Alleghanies was directed toward securing control 
of the Mississippi River and thus cutting off Arkansas, Louisiana, 
5ind Texas from the rest of the Confederacy. In 1861, as we 
have seen, there had been some fighting between the two factions 
in Missouri. Early in 1862 the Union forces in that state drove 



OPENING THE MISSISSIPPI 



417 



the Confederates into Arkansas and there defeated and scattered 
them in the hotly contested battle of Pea Ridge. 

The first Confederate line of defense in the West ran 
through southern Kentucky. Fort Henry on the Tennessee 
and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland were the important Breaking the 
points on this line, because they guarded two navigable rivers ^^* ^f" V 
which were pathways into the heart of Tennessee. In February, of defense 
1862, General Grant led a Union army against these forts. With 
the help of the river gunboats under Commodore Foote he 




From thr (ri;,nnal drauing by J. Steeple Davis 
The Attack on Fort Donelson 

easily captured Fort Henry. Fort Donelson made a stouter 
resistance, but after a desperate battle its garrison of nearly 
fifteen thousand men was forced to accept Grant's terms of 
"unconditional surrender." This was the first serious reverse of 
the Confederates in the war. They now abandoned Kentucky, 
and the Union forces soon occupied Nashville and overran a large 
part of western Tennessee. This made it impossible for the Con- 
federates to hold their upper strongholds on the Mississippi. They 
had built a great fortress on Island No. 10 in that river, but 
the Union general, Pope, captured it in April, 1862. The Federal 

gunboats now controlled the Mississippi from Cairo to Memphis. 
27 



418 



THE CIVIL WAR 



Shiloh 



The Confedoratos ostablishocl theli- second lino of defense 
in the West along a railioatl which ran from Memphis to 
The battle of Chattanooga and Charleston, thus connecting the East and 
the West. At Corinth, Mississippi, a north and south railroad 
crossed this east and west line. Most of the Confederate troops 
were gathered at Corinth to defend this important railroad 
junction. Grant moved his army up the Tennessee River to 
Pittsburg Landing, where he awaited the coming of General 




Western Campaigns in the Civil War 

Buell who was leading another Union force across the country 
from Nashville. Albert Sidney Johnston, one of the ablest 
Confederate generals, saw his opportunity to destroy Grant 
befoie Ruell could arriv(\ On April G, LS62, ho struck hard at 
Grant's army near Shiloh. Grant's men fought stubbornly'-, 
but they were forced back and when night fell they were in a 
perilous position. During the night Buell's army arrived on 
the field and the next morning Grant renewed the fight, recov- 
ered the ground lost the previous day, and at last drove the 
Confederates away. Shiloh was one of the most hotlj^ contested 






OPENING THE MISSISSIPPI 



419 




Farragut 
captures 
New Orleans 



Paintinij by J . Sttepk Davis 
Death of General Albert Sidney Johnston 
Confederate leader, at the Battle of Shiloh. 



fields of the whole war. 

Both sides lost heavily, and 

among 1 1 le ( \ )nfederate slain 

was Albert Sidney Johnston, 

their great leader. 

In the meantime a 

powerful Union fleet under 

David G. Farragut, the most 

famous sea fighter of the 

war, was sent against New 

Orleans. After bombarding 

the forts below that city for 

six days with little effect, 

Farragut daringly ran past 

them in the night, destroyed 

the Confederate gunboats, and proceeded up the river. New 

Orleans was now at his mercy, and before the end of April, 

1862, the flag of the 
Union floated once more 
over the chief seaport 
and greatest cotton 
market of the Confed- 
eracy. The forts below 
New Orleans soon sur- 
rendered, and thence- 
forth the navy was in 
control of the lower 
Mississippi. 

After the battle of 
Shiloh, General Halleck, 
in command of the The second 

united armies of Grant, Co^^f^^erate 

lin6 is 
Buell, and Pope, cau- broken 

tiously advanced upon 

Corinth. When Halleck 

was ready to assault 

this important strategic 

point, the Confederates 

Hairis (3- Ewing, WaMngton, D. c. abandoned it. After 

General H. W. HaUeck the chicf raillOad whlcll 




420 



THE CIVIL WAR 



The Con- 
federates 
invade 
Kentucky 



supplied Memphis was thus cut at Corinth/that important river 
port soon fell into the hands of the Union army. The second 
Confederate line of defense in the West was thus broken, and 
Vicksburg became the last remaining stronghold of the South 
on the Mississippi. 

There was some indecisive fighting in northern Mississippi 
during the fall of 1862, but the more important movements of 
that season took place in Kentucky and middle Tennessee. 

General Buell was or- 
dered to regain east 
Tennessee, whose 
people had remained 
steadfastly loyal to the 
Union. Before Buell 
was ready to move, 
Confederate General 
Braxton Bragg invad- 
ed Kentucky with a 
strong force. Buell 
hurried northward and 
both armies raced for 
the Ohio River, Buell 
reached Louisville 
first, where he found 
plentiful supplies and 
reinforcements. He 
now turned upon 
Bragg and fought him 
at Perryville. After 
this indecisive battle 
the Confederates 
slowly retired to Chattanooga, carrying with them an enormous 
quantity of supplies which ihey had gathered from the rich 
The battle of fields of Kentucky. Because he failed to follow Bragg, Buell 
Murfrees- -was removed from the connnand of the Union army and Rose- 
crans put in his place. On the last day of 1862 the two armies 
in Tennessee began a bloody three-days' contest at Murfrees- 
boro on Stone River, but neither of them gained any decided 
advantage from this battle. 

After the soldiers of the Union occupied New Orleans and 




Keystone View Co., Meadtillc, Pa. 
An Assault at Vicksburg, Mississippi 



boro 



OPENING THE MISSISSIPPI 



421 



Memphis the Confederates heavily fortified Vicksburg, the one The siege 
strong position left them on the Mississippi. Late in 1862 ^ Vicks- 
Grant and his famous lieutenant, Sherman, moved against 
this stronghold, but all their efforts to take it that year 
proved futile. Early in 1863 Grant marched his army down the 
west bank of the Mississippi until it was south of Vicksburg. 
Meanwhile the Union supply boats and transports under Com- 
modore Porter ran past the city in the night with slight loss, in 
spite of a terrific fire poured upon them from the batteries on 




The Surrender of Pemberton to Grant near Vicksburg 

the shore. Grant now crossed the river with his army, speedily 
occupied Jackson, the Capital of Mississippi, and then defeated 
the Confederates and drove then back into Vicksburg. He 
then besieged that city. Day after day a rain of shot and shell 
was steadily poured upon the doomed town. The Confederates 
bravely repelled two assaults upon their defenses, but at last 
they were starved into submission. On July 4, 1863, Vicksburg 
surrendered and nearly thirty thousand Confederates became 
prisoners of war. A few days later the Confederates gave up 
Port Hudson, lower on the river, and henceforth the "Father 
of Waters flowed unvexed to the sea." 



422 



THE CIVIL WAR 



Lee's second 
invasion of 
the North 



The armies 
meet at 
Gettysburg 



The battle- 
field of 
Gettysburg 



The Story of Gettysburg. — Wo loft tho opposing armios in 
Virginia facing each other across the Rappahannock River after 
the battle of Chancellorsville. Lee now determined to try once 
more to invade the North. His splendid army was flushed 
with victory, but it was daily becoming more difficult to provide 
it with food. Lee coveted the supplies which existed in great 
abundance in the North, Moreover, a decisive victory on 
northern soil might offset the Confederate losses in the West 

and end the war. 

Starting early in June, 
1863, from Fredericksburg, 
Virginia, Lee's army, eighty 
thousand strong, marched 
westward through tho gaps 
of the Blue Ridge into the 
valley of the Shenandoah 
and then swept rapidly 
northward across Maryland 
into Pennsylvania. Cham- 
])ersburg and York were 
occupied and Harrisburg 
was threatened. In the 
mc^antimo Hooker's army of 
ninety thousand men was 
moving northward in such 
a way as to keep between 
Lee and Washington, Balti- 
more, and Philadelphia. 
Near the end of June General Meade succeeded Hooker 
in the command of the Union army. On July 1st 
the advance guard of Meade's army met the Confederates 
near Gettysburg and began the most famous battle ever fought 
in America. 

In 1863 Gettysl^urg was a peaceful little town in southern 
Pennsylvania. Just west of it lies Seminary Ridge, extending 
toward tho southwest. On its southern border rises Cemetery 
Hill, which is prolonged southward as Cometoiy Ridge. Three 
miles south of Gettysburg this low ridge rises suddenly into a 
steep, rocky hill called Little Round Top. Just Ixyond is a 
higher hill called Round Top. Cemetery Hill curves back 




Courtesn of tlir F. GtitrlcunU Co., Philn., Pa. 
General Meade 



THE STORY OF GETTYSBURG 



423 



The first 

day's 

fighting 



toward the southeast iiito a rocky cHff called Culp's Hill. 
Between the two ridges lies a beautiful valley widening toward 
the south and dotted here and there with farmhouses. Many 
roads radiate from Gettysburg like the spokes of a wheel. 
Along these roads the Confederates were approaching the town 
from the west, the north, and the east, while the Union army 
was hurrying up from the 
south. 

The battle of Gettys- 
burg began on the morning 
of Jul}'' 1st. For hours the 
fighting raged furiously 
west and north of the town. 
Because they were 
marching toward a com- 
mon center the Confed- 
erate troops reached the 
battlefield sooner than the 
widely scattered divisions 
of the Union army. Late in 
the afternoon the superior 
numbers of the Confeder- 
ates compelled the Union 
forces west and north of 
Gettysburg to abandon 
their position and withdraw 
to a stronger one on Ceme- 
tery Hill south of the town. 
Here a new battle line was From the original pai/uing by ii. a. Oodm 

formed by General Han- The struggle for Little Round Top 

cock, who had been sent forward to represent General Meade. 
Fortunately, the Confederates were content with occupying 
Gettysburg and did not continue their attack until the next day. 
All that night Meade's men came swarming in from the 
southward, and by morning the Union army was in much better 
condition to resist an assault than it had been the previous Hard 
evening. Both generals spent the morning of July 2nd in fighting on 
studying the field, and there was no fighting vmtil the afternoon, jay 
During this time General Sickles, who led the Union left wing, 
advanced his troops to a peach orchard in the valley west of 




424 



THE CIVIL WAR 



Pickett's 

famous 

charge 



Little Round Top, This was the weak part of the Union hne, 
and sooi\ Longstreet, Lee's great heutenant, struck it hard. 
For hours the tide of battle ebbed and flowed at the peach 
orchard and through the wheat field and the rock-strewn 
woodland behind it. At last the troops of Sickles were 
driven back to Cemetery Ridge, but here the line stood firm and 
repelled the last Confederate assault. Meanwhile there was a 
desperate struggle for Little Round Top, which dominated the 

Federal position, but, by 
the utmost valor, it was 
held by the northern sol- 
diers. Toward night the 
Confederates charged in 
vain up the eastern slope of 
Cemetery Hill. As night 
fell they were more fortu- 
nate in gaining a foothold 
on Culp's Hill, but early 
the next morning Meade 
drove them from this posi- 
tion. The Union army still 
held its strong line on the 
hills south of Gettysburg. 
Lee had failed in his 
attacks on both wings of 
Meade's army. On July 3d 
he tried to break its center 
on Cemetery Ridge. About 
one o'clock in the afternoon 
a hundred Confederate guns 
opened fire upon the center 
of the Union line. The Fed- 
eral guns replied, and for two hours the earth trembled under a 
terrific artillery duel. Then fifteen thousand men of the South, 
led by Pickett with his division of Virginians, charged the Union 
center. There was no more heroic feat of arms during the 
whole Avar. With undaunted courage Pickett's men came on 
in the face of a withering fire, and a handful of them under 
Armistead surged over the stone wall which marked the Union 
line. But they were too few to hold what they had won and 




The Battlefield at Gettysburg 



THE STORY OF GETTYSBURG 



425 



were soon beaten back with awful slaughter. The cause of 
secession here reached its high water mark and began to recede. 
Two days later Lee began to withdraw and had little 
difficulty in regaining his old hnes in Virginia, where he was 
not seriously disturbed during the remainder of 1863. The After the 
losses at Getty si )urg were twenty-three thousand on the Union t)attle 
side and almost as many in the southern army. The wounded 




^^■"'m ^ u. 



-Jif 







--"'-^- 



-fl^*-^'/ 




© k I • n 1 ( - , MialulU, I'll 

General Hancock and Staff at the Battle of Gettysburg 

were tenderty cared for in the hospitals of the North. Later 
the bodies of the Union slain were gathered into the beautiful 
cemetery which Lincoln dedicated in the fall of 1863 with his 
immortal Gettysburg Address. 

The battlefield of Gettysburg is now a splendid national 
park, upon which each northern regiment has marked the 
place where it fought. The survivors of the northern and the Gettysburg 
southern armies held a glorious reunion at this inspiring shrine fifty years 
of patriotism during the first three days of July, 1913, the 
fiftieth anniversary of the battle. This wonderful meeting made 



426 



THE CIVIL WAR 



The Chicka- 

mauga 

campaign 




Coiulcsy uf the t'. Gulckunst Co., FkUa., Pa. 
General William S. Rosecrans 

ern sections of the Con- 
federacy. The capture 
of Chattanooga would 
make it difficult to send 
men and food from the 
region west of the Alle- 
ghanies to Lee's strug- 
gling army in Virginia. 
It would also give the 
Union forces a starting 
point from which to push 
deeper into the heart of 
the South. General 
Bragg defended this vital 
strategic point with a 
strong Confederate arni>'. 
Rosecrans, the Union 
leader, skilfully manoeu- 
vred Bragg out of Chat- 
tanooga and occupied 
the town . On Sept(>mber 
19 and 20, 18G3, the two 



it very clear that the bitter- 
ness of civil strife was gone 
and that the men of both 
sections rejoiced that Liber- 
ty and Union are, in truth, 
"one ;ind inseparable." 

From Chattanooga to 
the Sea. — In the summer 
of 18G3 the Union army in 
Tennessee, which had done 
little since the battle of 
Murfreesl)oro, resumed 
operations. Its first aim 
was to seize Chattanooga, 
a place of great importance 
because it commanded the 
railroads connecting the 
e;;stei'n, southern, and west- 




General George H. Thomas 
"The Rock of Chickamauga" 



FROM CHATTANOOGA TO THE SEA 



427 



armies m(^t on the fiercely eontested field of Chickninauga, 
tw(;lve miles southeast of Chattanooga. On the second day of' 
the battle a part of the Union army was swept f I'oni the field 
in confusion, but General Thomas with the left wing held his 
ground until nightfall with a steadfast valor which won for him 
the name, "The Rock of Chickamauga." 

After the battle of Chickamauga the Union army fell back 
to Chattanooga, where it was quickly besieged by the Confed- 
erates. For a time its position was one of peril, but soon The battle of 
Hooker and Sherman arrived with strong reinforcements, and Chattanooga 
Grant came from his triumph a t 
Vicksburg to take command. 
Supplies were quickly brought 
up and the army prepared for 
another battle. On Novembei' 
24th and 25th Grant won n 
great victory before Chattn- 
nooga. On the first day, in ;i 
battle above the clouds, Hooker 
drove the Confederate's from 
Lookout Mountain south of 
Chattanooga, and Sherman 
attacked Missionary Ridge east 
of the cit3^ On the second day 
the troops of Thomas stormed 
the Confederate lines on Mis- 
sionary Ridge, climbed to the 
crest of the mountain four 

hundred feet ^ above the plain, and swept the Confederates 
before them. The pursuit did not cease until the Confederates 
had been driven far southward into Georgia. Grant now 
promptly relieved Knoxville in East Tennessee, which the Con- 
federates were besieging and drove the last southern forces 
fi'om that loj'al region. This (Mided the fighting in 1863. 

Early in 1864 Grant was put in command of all the armies 
of the Union. When spring came he took the field in Virginia, 
leaving Sherman to finish the work in the West. It was Sher- Sherman's 
man's first task to capture Atlanta, an important railroad campaign 
center and doubly valu;i])le to the Confederates because of tlie Aifanta 
sorely needed supplies made in its mills and factories. Starting 




General William T. Sherman 



428 



THE CIVIL WAR 



in May, Sherman manoeuvred and fought his way through the 
mountainous country in northern Georgia until he stood before 
Atlanta. Johnston, the Confederate leader, had wisely with- 
drawn before him, but Hood, who now took Johnston's place, 
turned furiously upon the Union army, only to meet defeat in 
three bloody battles. Then Sherman soon captured Atlanta 
and destroyed all its factories and machine shops. This was a 
serious blow to the Confederacy. 




Farragut in the Battle of Mobile Bay 



Operations 
along the 
coast 



Farragut at 
Mobile Bay 



Throughout the war the navy was tightening its blockade 
of the southern coast and giving valuable assistance to military 
expeditions sent against the more important southern ports. 
These expeditions were not always successful, but every time 
one of them accomplished its purpose it made it more difficult 
for the Confederacy to get the foreign supphes its armies so 
much needed. In 1864 Mobile was the favorite resort of the 
blockade runners on the Gulf coast, and Admiral Farragut 
determined to close it. Lashed to the rigging of his flagship, 
above the smoke of battle, Farragut boldly ran past the forts 
at the entrance to Mobile Bay as he had passed those below New 



FROM CHATTANOOGA TO THE SEA 



429 



Orleans in 1862, destroyed the Confederate ships in a hot fight, 
and thus sealed up the important port of Mobile. 

After Hood abandoned Atlanta he led his men toward 
Tennessee, with the hope of compelling Sherman to fall 
back in order to defend Nashville. But Sherman refused to The last 
be diverted from the conquest of Georgia, and sent General campaign in 
Thomas back to oppose Hood. A better choice could not 
have been made. Thomas retired before Hood until he reached 




Sherman's March to the Sea and through the CaroUnas 

Nashville. Then, after thorough preparation, he turned upon 
the Confederates in December, 1864, and in the battle of Nash- 
ville, he utterly defeated and scattered Hood's army. This was 
the last serious fighting of the war in the West. 

Meanwhile Sherman was making his famous march from 
Atlanta to the sea. Breaking off all communication with the 
North, Sherman started from Atlanta in November with sixty "Marching 
thousand veteran troops. During the next month his army *^^*^"S^„ 
laid waste a strip of country sixty miles wide from Atlanta to ^^'"S*^ 
Savannah. The railroads were torn up, barns and mills burned, 



430 



THE CIVIL WAR 



Sherman's 
last cam- 
paign 



Bloody 
fighting in 
the Wilder- 



From Spott- 
sylvania to 
Petersburg 
and 
Richmond 



and a vast amount of other property destroyed. Every day 
foraging parties scoured the country bringing in loads of bacon, 
poultry, corn meal — in fact, everything that could be used for 
food. There was much truth in the song of Sherman's men: 

"How the turkeys gobbled which our couunissary found, 
How the sweet potatoes almost started from the ground, 
While we were marching through Cieorgia." 

Sherman met little opposition while engaged in this work 
of destruction. On Decem))er 22, 18G4, he sent President 
Lincoln this message : "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, 
the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammu- 
nition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton." But Sherman 
was not content with what he had done. He soon started 
northward, driving the Confederates before him and sweeping 
a wide path of ruin and desolation through the Carolina s. It 
was Sherman's purpose to join Grant before Richmond, but 
while he was still in North Carolina the news came that Grant's 
work was done and the war practi(;ally over. 

Grant and Lee. — In the early days of May, 18G4, Grant 
began the last "On to Richmond" campaign in Virginia. He 
soon found Lee's army in "The Wilderness," a region of wood- 
land and taiigletl thickets south of the Rapidan River. Grant 
had one hundred and twenty thousand men; Lee not more than 
half that num])er. But the; Confederate leader was one of the 
world's greatest soldiers, and he knew every road and path in 
the wild country which lay between the Union army and 
Richmond. After two days of bloody but fruitless fighting in 
the Wilderness, Grant marched around Lee's position, only to 
find the skilful adversary again confronting him ,at Spottsyl- 
vania Court House. Here assault followed assault for days, 
but all in vain. The southern lines could not be broken. It 
was during this time of hammering the Confederate position 
at Spottsylvania Court House that Grant wrote the character- 
istic words, "I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all 
summer." 

From Spottsylvania Com-t House Grant again marched 
around the (Miemy whom he could not defeat. At Cold Harbor 
another assault upon the Confederate position was beaten back 
with frightful slaughter. But Grant was not to be turned from 



The End of the Civil Wau — 1865 
The Civil ^^"al' virtually ended on Ai)ril 9, 1S()5, when Lee siii-- 
rendered his army to Cirant at Appomattox Court House upon the 
most generous terms. In his Personal Memoirs Crant thus describes 
the scene in the i)icture: "When 1 left canij) that morning I had 
not expected so soon the result that was then taking place and con- 
sequently was in rough garb. I was without a sword, and wore a 
soldier's blouse for a coat. When I went into the house I found 
General Lee. What his feelings were, I do not know. As he was 
a man of much dignity with an impassible face, it was impossible 
to say whether he felt glad that the end had finally come, or felt 
sad over the result, and was too manly to show it. My own feelings, 
which had been quite jubilant on tlie receipt of his letter, were sad 
and depressed. I fcU like anything rather than rejoicing at the 
downfall of a foe who iiad suffered so long and valiantly, and had 
suffered su nuich foi' a cause." 



GRANT AND LEE 



431 




the Shenan- 
doah Valley 



his storn purpose. He agnin moved by the left flank, crossed 
the James River, and settled down to l)esiege the Confederates 
in Richmond and Petersburg, ({rant was constantly searching 
for a weak place in the Confederate defenses, but Lee was 
wary and alert, and foiled him at every turn. 

During the summer of 1864 Lee tried to break Grant's 
remorseless grip upon the Confederate capital by sending 
General Early down the Shenandoah Valley to threaten Wash- Sheridan in 
ington. Early reached 
the gates of the national 
capital, only to be repulsed 
and driven away by its 
garrison with the aid of 
troops hurriedly sent from 
Grant's army. Grant then 
sent his dashing cavalry 
leader, Sheridan, to drive 
the Confederates from thi^ 
Shenandoah Valley. Sher- 
ridan defeated Early at 
Winchester and Fisher's 
Hill in September, 1864, 
and then proceeded to \ay 
w-aste the rich valley which 
had so often served the 
Confederates as a pathway 
to the North. Seventy 
mills and more than two 
thousand barns filled with 
hay and grain were liurned, 

and all the liv(^ stock driven away. Sheridan said that his 
work of destruction was done so thoroughly that "a crow 
flying over the country would need to carry his rations." 
But Early came back while Sheridan was absent from his army 
and, in a gallant attack at dawn, surprised the Union troops at 
Cedar Creek and drove them from the field. Sheridan heard 
the sound of battle at Winchester, and riding rapidly southward 
he rallied his flying men and led them back to a victory 
which swept the Confederate arrAy from the Shenandoah 
Valley forever. The story of this brilliant action is stir- 



Sliitue by Gitlzon Boniltint in Wiisliintjtoii, D. C. 
General Philip H Sheridan 



432 



THE CIVIL WAR 



The faU of 
Richmond 



ringly told in Thomas Buchanan Read's famous poem, "Sheri- 
dan's Ride." 

Meanwhile the siege of Richmond and Petersburg dragged 
on through the fall of 1864 and during the long and weary- 
winter months which followed it. As spring drew near, Grant 
began to seize the railroads by which supplies reached Rich- 
mond. At last Lee could hold out no longer. Early in April 




From the 'painting byH.A. Odgen 
General Lee's Farewell to His Soldiers 



Lee sur- 
renders at 
Appomattox 



he abandoned the Confederate capital and marched away 
toward the southwest in the hope of joining the southern forces 
in North Carolina. Grant followed in hot pursuit, and in a few 
days Lee's army was hemmed in at Appomattox Court House. 
Further resistance was useless, and on April 9, 1865, Lee sur- 
rendered his army to Grant upon the most generous terms. 
Lee's devoted soldiers were free to go to their homes upon their 
promise not to fight any more against the United States. They 



REFERENCES 433 

were not to be punished in any way, and those of them who 
owned horses or mules were permitted to take the animals home 
with them because, as Grant said, "They would need them to 
work theii" little farms," Grant permitted no rejoicing over the 
fallen foe, and his men shared their rations with the starving 
Confederates. Lee bade his men good-by with the words, 
"I have done the best I could for you," and rode away toward 
Richmond. Within a few weeks all the other Confederate 
forces in the field laid down their arms and once more the nation 
was at peace. 

REFERENCES. 

Wilson, Division and Reunion; Dodge, Bird's-eye Vietv of the Cinl 
War; Hosmer, The Appeal to Amis; Outcome of the Civil War; Rhodes, 
History of the United States, \ oh. lll-\ ; Schouler, History of the United 
States, Vol. VI ; Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Northern People. Hart, American History Told by Contem- 
poraries, IV, 228-239. 

2. The Southern People. Hart, American History Told by Contem- 
poraries, IV, 240-25.5. 

.3. England and the Civil War. Rhodes, History of the U id' cd States.,, 
IV, 76-95. 

4. The Monitor and the Merrimac. Rhodes, History of the United 
States, III, 608-(314. 

5. The Battle of Shiloh. Hosmer, The Appeal to Arms, 99-111. 

6. The Battle of Antietam. Hosmer, The Appeal to Arms, 186-200. 

7. Gettysburg. Schouler, History of the United States, VI, 358-369. 

8. The Story of Pickett's Charge. Hart, American History Told by 
Contemporaries, IV, 372-376. 

9. Chickamauga. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, 
IV, 381-385. 

10. "Marchhig Through Georgia." Hosmer, Outcome of the Civil War, 
201-217. 

11. Sheridan's Ride. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, 
IV, 422-427. 

12. The Surrender of Lee. Rhodes, History of the United States, V, 
120-129. 

28 



434 THE CIVIL WAR 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE 

Poems: Bryant, Our Country's Call; Longfellow, The Cumberland; 
Stedman, Kearney at Seven Pines; Read, Sheridan's Ride; Lowell, The 
Harvard Commemoration Ode. 

Stories: Coffin, Drumbeat of the Nation; Marching to Victory; 
Redeeming the Republic; Freedom Triumphant; Stiles, Four Years 
under Marse Robert; Johnston, The Long Roll; Cease Firing; Brady, 
The Patriots; Crane, The Red Badge of Courage; Cooke, Wearing the 
Gray; Hilt to Hilt; Cable, The Cavalier. 

Memoirs: Grant, Personal Memoirs; Porter, Campaigning with 
Grant; Sherman, Memoirs; Sheridan, Personal Memoirs; Long, Memoirs 
of Robert E. Lee; Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox. 

Biographies: Wister, Ulysses S. Grant; Trent, Robert E. Lee; Page, 
Robert E. Lee; Barnes, David G. Farragut; Michie, General McClellan; 
Pennypacker, General Meade; Force, General Sherman; Coppee, General 
Thomas. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1 . For what were the soldiers on each side fighting in the Civil War? 
Compare the military strength of the two sections at the outbreak of the 
war. 

2. Estimate the influence of the blockade in winning the war. Locate 
on a map the chief seaports of the Confederacy. 

3. In what ways did the physical geography of Virginia influence the 
history of the Civil War? Why was the control of the Mississippi River 
so important in the Civil War? Why were the people of eastern Tennessee 
loyal to the Union while the rest of the state favored the Confederacy? 

4. Why was each of the following places an important strategic point 
in the war: Corinth, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta? 

5. What were Lee's motives in invading the North in 1863? What is 
meant by calling Gettysburg the "high water mark of the Confederacy"? 

6. The i)upils will enjoy looking at the pictures in Battles and Leaders 
of the Civil War and in A Pictorial History of the Civil War, and will learn 
much about war-time life from them. 

7. Draw a map of the Confederacy and locate upon it the great battles 
named in this chapter. 



CHAPTER XXII 

The Country in War Time 

Life in the Army. — In the last chapter we traced the 
military histoiy of the Civil War. In this we shall study 
the life of the people during the trying days from 1861 to Numbers 
1865. To many the war was a time of service in the army. 
More than two and a half million men in the North and over a 




The White House of the Confederacy 
The home of Jefferson Davis during the Civil War 

million in the South wore the uniform of the soldier. This 
means that nearly one-half of the northern men of military 
age put on the Union blue, and that more than nine out of ten 
of such men in the South were clad in Confederate gray. 

The first calls for troops were answered with enthusiasm 
in both sections of the country, and large numbers of eager and 
patriotic young men hastened to enlist. But as time passed it Volunteer- 
grew more and more difficult to keep the ranks filled. Early 'JJIfJ^g 
in 1862 the Confederate Congress passed a draft law which made 

435 



436 THE COUNTRY IN WAR TIME 

all citizens between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five liable 
to military service. From time to time the age limits were 
extended mitil at last it was said that the South was "robbing 
the cradle and cheating the grave " to get soldiers for its armies. 
In 1863 it became necessary for the Congress of the United States 
to pass a draft act under which men were drawn by lot for 
miUtary duty. This law was very unpopular, and the first 
attempt to enforce it led to a great riot in New York City in 
which hundreds of people were killed. Besides drafting soldiers 
for the Union armies, the federal government, and many north- 
ern states and counties as well, encouraged men to volunteer 
by paying them bounties in cash when they enlisted. In the 
end the South failed for lack of men and supplies, but the 
armies of the Union were larger in 1865 than at any previous 
time during the war. 

We must not think of the life of the soldiers in the Civil 
War as one of constant fighting. After men were mustered 
Drill and the into the service they were kept usually for weeks and sometimes 
lack of it |-Qj, months in camps of instruction where their days were given 
to military drill. Sometimes when the need was great they 
were hurried off to the battlefield with very little training for 
the work before them. In many instances the officers knew 
little more about the art of war than the men they led. In 
time many of these officers from civil life became skilful soldiers, 
but most of the men who rose to high command in both the 
Union and the Confederate armies were graduates of the 
United States military academy at West Point. 

The life of the soldier in the field was marked by exposure 
to all kinds of weather, by long and toilsome marches often 
In camp and through rain and mud, by days of drill and work in camp, and 
batt^lefield sometimes by months of tedious inactivity in winter quarters. 
Yet the men on both sides bore the hardships of army life with 
stout hearts. The soldiers of the Union sang "John Brown's 
Body" or "The Battle-Cry of Freedom" as they marched, 
and the music of "Dixie" often rang out around the campfires 
of the Confederates. Julia Ward Howe's "Battle HjTxin of the 
Republic" is the noblest of the many songs inspired by the 
Civil War. We may be sure that the days when letters came 
from home were awaited with eager expectation by the soldiers 
of both armies. The exposure and hardships of army life 



LIFE IN THE ARMY 



437 



caused much sickness and many died of disease. Men were 
often in danger when on picket duty or out on scouting service, 
and when the great battles were fought, thousands were killed 
or wounded or taken prisoners. The prisoners on both sides 
suffered great privations and many of them perished in the 
prison camps. 

The wounded were cared for as tenderly as possible in In the 
field hospitals and in large general hospitals in cities far in the hospital 
rear of the armies. 
A great deal of the 
suffering and death 
among the wounded 
of the Civil War was 
due to the fact that 
the surgeons of that 
time had not yet 
learned the use of 
antiseptics. The 
suffering in the 
Confederate hos- 
pitals was especial- 
ly severe because of 
the serious lack of 
medicines and other 
hospital supplies in 
the South. Two 
northern societies, 
the Sanitary Com- 
mission and the JuUa Ward Howe 

(^ V, ,.; + i n n r^rwm Her song, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," was One 

w li 1 1 & L 1 ct 11 . V^ U 111 - of tjje niost inspiring songs of the Civil War. 

mission, helped to 

care for the sick and wounded, and looked after the moral 
welfare of the Union soldiers much as the Red Cross Society, 
the Young Men's Christian Association, and similar organ- 
izations workcni for our men in the Great War with Germany 
which we entered in 1917. 

The Civil War was a struggle in which the men on both 
sides were equally sincere in fighting for what they believed to 
be right, though all men can now see that it was best for >both 
sections that the Union should be preserved and slavery abol- 




438 



THE COUNTRY IN WAR TIME 



Priceless 
memories 



Home 
support 



The North 
prospered 
in war 
time 



ished. The time has come when all Americans alike can cherish 
as a priceless heritage the memory of the devotion, the fortitude, 
and the splendid valor of the men who wore the blue and the 
men who wore the gray. The soldiers of Grant and Lee who 
survived the Civil War were the leaders in rebuilding and 
reuniting our country. Of the multitude on both sides who 
fell on southern battlefields it may be said with equal truth, 

"On Fame's eternal camping ground 
Their silent tents are spread, 
And Glory guards, with solemn round, 
The bivouac of the dead." 

The Folks at Home. — Not all the burdens and privations 
of war are borne by the soldiers who do the fighting. The armies 
of a free people cannot long wage war unless they have the 
ardent and loyal support of the folks at home, for those who 
stay at home must produce the food, manufacture the supplies, 
and, above all, give the moral support and encouragement with- 
out which any war would soon 'fail. In our Civil War the 
fighting men on l)oth sides were fortunate in having such support 
in full measure from the people behind them. 

The industries of the North were very prosperous during 
the Civil War. The loyal states suffered little from invading 
armies and their people could sell at high prices everything 
that they produced. The northern farmers raised great 
c}uantities of food for the Union army, and anj^ surplus that 
they had left found a ready market in Europe. The factories 
were busy making clothing, shoes, blankets, and arms for the 
soldiers. New mines were opened and the forests were rapidly 
converted into lumber. So many men were in the army that 
those who remained at home easily found employment at high 
wages. Indeed, the demand for workers was so great that inven- 
tion was stimulated, and labor-saving machines like the reaper 
and the sewing machine were rapidly coming into general use. 
Never before had the people of the northern states been so 
busy, and never before had they acquired money so easily or 
spent it so freely. "Commerce, business, manufactures and 
labor," said the leading newspaper of Chicago, "are going on 
as in a profound peace save with a more impetuous and whirling 
activity than peace ever knew." 



THE FOLKS AT HOME 



439 



In striking contrast to this war-time prosperity in the North 
were the poverty and ruin which the Civil War inflicted upon 
the South. The invading armies of the Union destroyed its Privations 
raih'oads, burned its barns, mills, and factories, and left a path "^ *^® South 
of desolation behind them. The old South was an agricultural 
region, but the blockade made it well-nigh impossible for its 
people to send their cotton, tobacco, and sugar to market. It 
was equally difficult for them to procure many of the common. 
necessities of hfe for which they had always depended upon 




A Consequence of War 

the outside world. Tea and coffee disappeared, salt was scarce 
and hard to get, and in the latter part of the war the men in 
the Confederate armies were in sore need of shoes, blankets, 
and warm clothing. • After the railroads of the South broke 
down, food grew scarce and very expensive in the cities. Lee's 
soldiers did not surrender until they were on the verge of starva- 
tion. Yet all these privations were borne by the people of the 
South with a cheerful fortitude made possible only by an iptense 
devotion to the "Lost Cause." 

The white people of the South have never forgotten the 
wonderful fidelity of the slaves during the Civil War. While Fidelity of 
nearly all the southern white men were in the Confederate *^® negroes 



440 



THE COUNTRY IN WAR TIME 



Common 
experiences 



War-time 
literature 



The cost of 
the war 



armies, their wives and children were safe at home though 
surrounded by thousands of negroes. Under the direction of 
the old men and the women, the faithful slaves continued to 
cultivate the plantations. Though most of the negroes desired 
freedom and well understood that Union success would give it 
to them, such was their respect and affection for their masters' 
families that few slaves ran away except in those sections where 
they followed the invading northern armies. 

In spite of the great contrast in material prosperity between 
the North and the South, both sections had many war-time 
experiences in common. In both, life was exciting. The women 
of both parts of our country watched with the same sorrowful 
foreboding as the soldiers marched away, and toiled with the 
same passionate devotion to provide the lint, bandages, and 
clothing needed in the hospitals. The folks at home on both 
sides knew the same anxious waiting for news from the battle- 
fields and the same bitter grief for those who were slain. The 
heavy losses of war fell upon the North and the South alike, 
but because of its larger population and its greater resources 
the North was far better able to bear them. 

The intense feelings of wrath, sorrow, and exultation stirred 
by the war for the Union find their best expression in the 
writings of the time. The years just before and during the war 
are the golden age of American literature. Our greatest poets, 
Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, and Whitman 
did much of their best work during this period. The outcome 
of the Civil War inspired Lowell's "Commemoration Ode," con- 
sidered the noblest poem ever written in America. 

Paying for the War. — It is impossible to tell exactly how 
much it cost our country in men and money to save the Union 
and to free- the slaves. About seven hundred thousand soldiers, 
counting those who perished on both sides, were slain in 
battle or died of wounds or of disease. The health of many 
thousands more was permanently wrecked by the exposure 
and the hardships of army life. The Union government spent 
three -and a half billion dollars in carrying on the war. If we 
add to this amount the waste and destruction of property in 
the South, the loss of four million slaves who were worth at 
least two billion dollars to their owners before the war, the 
interest on our war debt, and the four billion dollars paid in 



PAYING FOR THE WAR 



441, 



pensions since 1865, the loss in money inflicted upon the people 
of the United States by the Civil War will probably reach the 
enormous total of ten billion dollars. 

Money is often called the sinews of war. It requires a vast 
amount of it in war time to pay the wages of the soldiers and 
provide them with food, clothing, arms, and ammunition. The 
government can procure money only by taxing the people and 
by borrowing, and both of these methods were freely used during 
the Civil War. The duties on imported goods were raised from 



War taxes 







Script or Fractional Currency Issued by the Confederate States 

time to time until, in 1865, our people were living under a very 
high tariff, which had a marked effect in promoting the growth 
of manufacturing in the North. Heavy taxes were also imposed 
upon many goods made within the country. It was said at the 
time that there was a tax upon "every article which enters into 
the mouth or covers the back or is placed under the foot ; upon 
everything which is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste." 
There were taxes upon all incomes above six hundred dollars; 
stamps were required upon checks, receipts, and legal papers; 
and special taxes were imposed upon articles of luxury like 
gold watches and pianos. 

In spite of its large income from the war taxes, the federal 
government frequently found it necessary to borrow money. 



442 



THE COUNTRY IN WAR TIME 



Borrowing 
money 

Bonds 



Greenbacks 
and their 
effect 



It did this in two ways, by selling bonds and by issuing treasury 
notes. Both were promises to pay, but they differed in two 
important respects. The bonds bore interest and were payable 
at the end of a definite term of years. The treasury notes, which 
were often called "greenbacks" because of the color of the 
ink with which they were printed, did not bear interest and 
were not payable at any specified time. These greenbacks 
were paid out by the government for the supplies which it 
purchased and were used as paper money by the people. Of 
course, if the government would pay gold coin or specie for 
them whenever it was asked to do so, the greenbacks would l)c 
worth just as much as the gold. But early in the war the 
government suspended specie payment; that is, it stopped 
paying its notes in gold on demand. The valile of the green- 
backs then depended upon the faith of the people in the future 
ability and disposition of the United States to redeem them in 
gold. Greenbacks were issued in such large quantities that 
the people began to fear that the government might never be 
able to redeem them. This feeling grew especially strong when 
Confederate victories made it seem that there was small hope 
of saving the Union. For these reasons the greenbacks depreci- 
ated in value until they were worth much less than their face 
value in gold. But the government had made them a legal 
tender by law; that is, a creditor was required to accept them 
whenever a debtor offered them in paj^ment of a debt or for a 
purchase. As the people had to accept this cheap paper money 
for their goods, they raised the prices of the goods, until before 
the war ended it took nearly three dollars in greenbacks to 
pay for what could be bought for one dollar in gold. We still 
use the greenbacks as money, but ever since 1879 they have 
been worth just as much as gold, because, at the beginning of 
that year the government began once more to redeem them 
in gold on demand. This act is called "the resumption of specie 
payment." 

In 1863 Congress passed a national banking act. This law 
provided that, if a bank would invest at least one-third of its 
The national capital in gov(M'nment bonds, the government would permit it 
to issue bank notes to the value of ninety per cent of these 
bonds. The government kept in its possession the bonds belong- 
ing to each bank as security that the bank would pay its notes. 



banks 



THE END OF SLAVERY 443 

If a national bank failed, the United States would use its bonds 
to make its notes good. This law made national banking 
profitable, because the bank drew interest on its bonds and also 
on the bank notes which it loaned as money. The purpose of 
the national banking act was to make it easier for the govern- 
ment to borrow^ money by encouraging the banks to buy its 
bonds, and at the same time to give the people the use of the 
good paper money issued by the national banks in place 
of the unsatisfactory bank notes formerly issued by state banks. 
The state banks soon stopped circulating their notes as money 
because the national government put such a heavy tax on 
state bank notes that the state banks could no longei" afford 
to issue them. We still have a large number of national banks 
in the United States and much of our paper money consists of 
the notes which they issue. 

The Confederacy had far more difficulty than the Union in 
procuring money with which to carry on the Civil War. It was 
impossible to raise very much money in the South by taxation. Finances of 
One law required the southern farmers to hand over one-tenth ^^^ Con- 
of what they raised on their farms to the government. Some ^ ^ 
bonds were sold, but the chief financial dependence of the Con- 
federacy was upon paper money which it issued in great quan- 
tities. This C'onfederate currency depreciated in value so 
rapidly that a year before the war ended it took on(^ himdred 
and fifty dollars of it to buy a pair of shoes. When the Con- 
federacy fell, its bonds and notes became worthless. After 
the war the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of 
the United States provided that ''neither the United States, 
nor any state, shall assume or pay any debt or obligation in- 
curred in aid of insvuTCction or rebellion against the United 
States." 

The End of Slavery. — The southern people loved their 
states more than they did the United States and fought for 
the right of each state to withdraw from the Union if it pleased. The real 
The men of the North believed that they owed their highest cause of the 
allegiance to the whole nation and rushed to arms, not to ^^ 
destroy slavery, but to save the Union. But slavery was the 
real cause of the Civil War. The discussion of it and the 
conflict over its extension into the West had sectionalized the 
country and arrayed the North and the South against each other. 



444 



THE COUNTRY IN WAR TIME 



Anti-slavery 
clamor 



Lincoln's 
policy 



At the outbreak of the war, however, neither side was wilHng 
to admit that it was fighting over slavery. 

Early in the war the radical antislavery men in the North 
began to cry that slavery must be destroyed if the Union was 
to be saved. They pointed out how the slaves strengthened the 
South by cultivating its plantations and building its forts. At 
first President Lincoln paid little attention to the growing anti- 
slavery clamor. This was not because he favored slavery in 

any sense. On the con- 
trary he hated it as 
much as any abolition- 
ist. "If slavery is not 
wrong," he once said, 
"nothing is wrong." 
When he was inaugu- 
rated, Lincoln thought 
that he had no right to 
interfere with slavery 
in the states where it 
existed. After the war 
began, he saw that he 
could strike at it as a 
military measure, but 
he decided to wait un- 
til he was sure that the 
people would support 
him. Moreover, he was 
especially eager to hold 
the border states of 
Maryland, Kentucky, 
and Missouri in the 
Union, and their people were slaveholders who might be driven 
into the arms of the South if he acted rashly. In all that he 
did, Lincoln's first thought was to save the Union. To those 
who complained that he was slow to act against slavery he said, 
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would 
do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would 
do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others 
alone, I would also do that." 

By midsummer of 1862 Lincoln was convinced that freeing 




Fromthe statue by Auiju.<tn:< St. Cn.n, 
Abraham Lincoln 
A famous statue in Lincoln Park, Chicago. 



THE END OF SLAVERY 445 

the slaves in the seceded states would h(>lp to save the Union 
and that the people of the loyal states would approve and 
support such a measure. On July 22nd he read the first draft The Emanci- 
of an Emancipation Proclamation to the members of his cab- Potion Proc- 
inet. One of them suggested that he wait until the Union army 
won a victory. This was wise advice and Lincoln laid his 
proclamation aside until after the battle of Antietam. Then 
he said, "I have made a vow that if McClellan drove Lee across 
the Potomac I would send the proclamation after him." 
Lincoln kept this vow, and on September 22, 1862, he issued a 
proclamation declaring that on January 1, 1863, "All persons 
held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, 
the people whereof shall then be in rebelHon against the United 
States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." The 
states in the Confederacy paid no attention to tliis warning, 
and on January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the promised Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation naming the states and parts of states in 
which all slaves were declared free. 

The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the immortal 
documents in the history of the long struggle of men everywhere 
for liberty. It made free men of three and one-half million Its effect 
slaves. At the same time it made sure the preservation of the 
Union. The people of the South hoped that England would 
interfere in their behalf because of her great need of their cotton. 
Most of the upper classes in England, as we have seen, did 
sympathize with the South. But the English common people 
hated slavery, and when they saw that the North was fighting 
to destroy it, there was no longer any danger that their govern- 
ment would help the Confederacy. Without such foreign aid 
to break the blockade, the cause of the South was hopeless. 
Moreover, the freeing of the slaves quickened the zeal of the 
antislavery men in the North, and henceforth they fought 
with greater energy and determination than ever. 

We must remember that the Emancipation Proclamation 
did not free the slaves in the border slave states which remained 
true to the Union, or even in those parts of the seceded states The 
where the authority of the United States had been restored, thirteenth 
Early in the war Lincoln tried to persuade the slaveholders in ^^ ^.j^g (^q^_ 
the liorder states to free their slaves on the condition that they stitution 
should be paid for them by the federal government, but they 



446 



THE COUNTRY IN WAR TIME 



The great 
leader 



Lincoln and 
the people 



refused to listen to this proposition. After the Emancipation 
Proclamation the states of West Virginia, Missouri, and Mary- 
land abolished slavery within their borders. In January, 1865, 
Congress proposed the thirteenth amendment to the Constitu- 
tion. This am(nidment provides that: "Neither slavery nor 
involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within the United 
States, *or in any place subject to their jurisdiction." By 
December, 1865, three-fourths of the states had ratified this 
amendment, and it became a part of the supreme law of the 
land. Slavery thus passed away in the United States forever. 

Abraham Lincoln.— iEdwin 
Markham, one of our Ameri- 
can poets, fitly calls Lincoln 
"the Captain with the mighty 
heart," and says of him that 

"When the step of earthquake 
shook the house, 

Wrenching the rafters from 
their ancient hold, 

He held the ridgepole up, and 
spiked again 

The rafters of the Home." 

Side by side with Washington, 
the father of our country, our 
people will always honor Lin- 
coln because he preserved the 
Union and gave it a new birth 
of freedom. 

When he became president 
in 1861 Lincoln was an untried and little known man. Many 
people doubted his fitness for the great task before him. But 
the strength of the tall, homely Westerner who had grown 
to manhood on the frontiers of Indiana and Illinois, was 
soon apparent. Lincoln's three chief advisers, William H. 
Seward, secretary of state, Salmon P. Chase, secretary of 
treasury, and Edwin M. Stanton, secretary of war, were all 
able and forceful men, yet they quickly discovered that the 
president was the master spirit of the administration. Some 
of the politicians found fault with I;incoln, but the common 




©Keystone View Co., Meadrilk, I'a 

Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln 

As preserved in the Lincoln Memorial, 
Hodgensville, Kentucky 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 447 

people soon learned to love and trust the honest, tactful, and 
patient yet resolute man in the White House, and their confi- 
dence in his wisdom and in his patriotism grew as long as 
he lived. 

When the time came for the presidential election of 1864 
a few dissatisfied Republican politicians wanted to set Lincoln 
aside, Ijut the people would not listen to them and the president The election 
was renominated almost without opposition. The supporters ° 
of Lincoln in 1864 called themselves the Union party. This 
party, which included many war Democrats as well as the 
Republicans, declared in the plainest terms for the restoration 
of the Union and the destruction of slaver3^ Andrew Johnson, 
a loyal Democrat of Tennessee, was named for the vice-presi- 
dency. The Democrats said in their platform that the war 
to preserve the Union was a failure and that it ought to be 
stopped. But General McClellan, their candidate for the presi- 
dency, declared that he could not look his old comrades in 
the face and say that, and insisted that no peace could be 
permanent without Union. The campaign of 1864 resulted in 
the triumphant reelection of Lincoln. 

On March 4, 1865, Lincoln took the oath of office as presi- 
dent for a second time. The short address which he made on 
that, occasion is one of the most beautiful in all literature. Lincoln's 
Speaking of the North and of the South he said, "Both read second 
the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes ^^d^|sg^ 
His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men 
should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their 
bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, 
that we be not judged." 

Of the approaching end of the war Lincoln said: "Fondly 
do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of 
war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue 
until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and 
fifty years of unreciuited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop 
of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn 
with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still 
it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and 
righteous altogether.'" 

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firm- 
ness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive 



448 



THE COUNTRY IN WAR TIME 



on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, 
to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his 
widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish 
a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." 
Just a month after Lincoln began his second term, he walked 
through the streets of Richmond after the Confederates aban- 

The death : doned that city. The end of 

of Lincoln the war was at hand. In a 

few days there came the news 
of Lee's surrender. But in the 
midst of then' joy over the 
coming of peace, the people 
whom Lincoln had led 
through four awful years of 
war were suddenly called 
upon to mourn him "with 
the passion of an angry 
grief." On the evening of 
April 14, 1865, Mr. and Mrs. 
Lincoln went with two young 
friends to Ford's Theatre in 
Washington. During the 
play an actor named Booth 
entered the president's box 
from the rear and shot Mi'. 
Lincoln through .the head. 
The unconscious victim was carried to a house across the 
' street, where he died the next morning. "Now he belongs 
to the ages," said Stanton, Lincoln's great war secretary, as 
he stood in tears by the bedside of his fallen chief. 

The deep national sorrow caused by Lincoln's death is best 
pictured in Walt Whitman's noble poem, "O Captain! My 
"The first ('aptain!" Many writers have told the fascinating story of 
American" Lincoln's rise from the rude log cabin in Kentucky in which 
he was born to the foremost place in our nation in the most 
critical hour in its history. No American biography is more 
inspiring. Among the numerous estimates of Lincoln's life 
and character in prose and verse perhaps the finest is that 
of Lowell in his immortal "Commemoration Ode." 




Keystone View Co., MeadviMe, Pa. 



Ford's Theatre in which Lincoln was shot, 
Washington, D. C. / 



REFERENCES 449 

"Standing like a tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame, 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man; 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 

New birth of our new soil, the first American." 

REFERENCES. 

Wilson, Division and Reunion; Hosmer, Outcome of the Civil War 
(especially Chaps. XV-XVI) ; Rhodes, History of the United States, III-V 
(especially Chaps. XXVII-XXVIII); Schouler, History of the United 
States, Vol. VI ; Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions in the North During 
the Civil War; Schwab, The Confederate States of America. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Leaders in the Civil ^^'ar. Hosmer, The Appeal to Arms, 
19-34. 

2. Getting Ready to Fight. Hosmer, The Appeal to Ar7ns, 70-83. 

3. Life in War Time. Hosmer, Outcome of the Civil War, 57-7 L 

4. The Soldiers of the Civil War. Schouler, History of tJie United 
States, VI, 290-316. 

5. The Spirit of the North. Hosmer, Outcome of the Civil War, 249- 
268. 

6. The Spirit of the South. Hosmer, Outcome of the Civil War, 269-289. 

7. The Treatment of Prisoners of War. Rhodes, History of the 
United States, V, 483-515. 

8. The Effect of the Blockade in the South. Rhodes, History of 
the United States, III, 544-548. 

9. The Gains and Losses of the War. Dodge, Bird's-Eye View of 
the Civil War, 320-327. 

10. Emancipation. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, 

IV, 390-411. 

11. The North in War Time. Rhodes, History of the United States, 

V, 189-342. 

12. The South in War Time. Rhodes, History of the United States, V, 
34.3-481. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Whitman, Captain! My Captain!; Tom Taylor, Abraham 
Lincoln; Markham, Lincoln; Ryan, The Conquered Banner; Osgood, 
Driving Home the Cows. 
29 



450 . THE COUNTRY IN WAR TIME 

Stories: Page, Two Little Confederates; Marse Chan; Among the 
Camps; Andrews, The Perfect Tribute; Sea well. The Victory; Eggleston, 
The Master of Warlock; Glasgow, The Battle Ground; Mitchell, In War 
Time; Westways; Fox, The Ldttle Shepherd of Kingdom Come; Churchill, 
The Crisis. 

Reminiscences: Alcott, Hospital Sketches; Eggleston, A Rebel's 
Recollections; Harris, Tales of the Home Folks in Peace and War; Wise, 
The End of an Era. 

Biographies: Tarbell, Life of Abraham Lincoln; Dodd, Jefferson 
Dans; Pendleton, Alexander H. Stephens; Lothrop, William H. Seward; 
Hart, Salmon P. Chase; Gorham, Edwin M. Stanton. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Can both sides be right in war? 

2. Sum up the causes of the CivU War. What great questions did it 
decide? 

3. Make a list of all the Civil War songs that you can find. Make a 
similar list of famous poems upon Civil War topics. How many of these 
poems have you read? 

4. Wliat progress has been made in medicine and surgery since the 
Civil War? Compare military life in the Civil War and in our war with 
Germany in 1917-1918. Make a similar comparison of the experiences of 
the folks at home. 

5. Was the good conduct of the slaves in the Civil War due to their 
virtues or to their ignorance? 

6. Define "bond," "treasury note," "bank note," "legal tender," 
"suspension of specie payment." What is meant by saying that "gold is 
at a premium"? 

7. Explain the difference between the Emancipation Proclamation 
and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. 

8. Why was the death of Lincoln a great misfortune to the South? 
Find all the poems you can about Lincoln. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

The Recovery of the Nation 

The Home-Coming of the Soldiers. — When the Civil War 
was over the soldiers on both sides returned to then- homes. 
The defeated Confederates were permitted to go home at once The armies 
upon their promise not to fight any more against the Union, disbanded 
The huge Union army was disbanded more" slowly. The troops 
of Grant and Sherman were brought to Washington, where 
for two days they marched in triumphal review thi'ough the 
streets of the national capital. Then as rapidly as the work 
could be done the men who had saved the Union were mustered 
out and sent to their homes. For months the trains were filled 
with returning soldiers. Every nook and corner of the North 
welcomed the home-coming veterans. Within a year nearly a 
million men had gladly turned from the ways of war to the 
jjcaceful pursuits of civil life. 

The nation did not forget the men who had borne the heat 
and burden of battle. The government gave generous pensions 
to those who were disabled by wounds or by the hardships of The "old 
army life. Many ''old soldiers" became the leaders in the soldiers" 
industrial and political life of their communities. Soon associa- 
tions of veterans, like the Grand Army of the Repubhc, were 
organized to continue the comradeship formed in the army and 
to keep alive the memories of the war. 

We have seen how the industries of the North had prospered 
during the war. There was work for all, and most of the return- 
ing Union soldiers soon found places on the farms or in the work- In the North 
shops and offices of their section. Those whom hfe in the army 
had unsettled and given a taste for adventure went to the West 
where they established new homes on the frontier or helped con- 
struct the Union Pacific Railroad, which was built just after the 
war to connect the valley of the Mississippi with the Pacific Coast. 

Far different was the home-coming of the soldiers of the 
South. Slowly and painfully they tramped homeward through 
a land ravaged by war. Upon their arrival they faced poverty. In the South 
for the war had taken from them everything that they possessed 

451 



452 



THE RECOVERY OF THE NATION 



The plan 
of the 
President 



except the luiid. It required the toil of years to rebuild the 
industries of their section. Their former slaves were free, and 
the two races must learn the difficult lesson of how to live and 
work together in their new relation. Practically all authority 
except that of the victorious Union army had ceased to exist 
in the South, and there was pressing need for the reconstruction 
of state and local governments that could maintain law and 
order and protect life and property. 

The Reconstruction 
of the State Govern- 
ments in the South. — 
Lincoln had begun the 
work of reconstructing 
the state governments in 
the South before his 
death. He held that the 
war had been fought to 
)rove that states could 
not lawfully withdraw 
from the Union, Init he 
said that the states of the 
Confederacy were out of 
their right relation to the 
Union. His great heart 
was filled with the spirit 
of forgiveness for the 
southern people, and he 
wanted to bring the se- 
ceded states back to their 
old relation to the Union 
as gently and quickly as possible. For the most part Andrew 
Johnson, the new president, carried on Lincoln's plans. As soon 
as the war was over, the southern ports were opened to commerce, 
the duties were collected in them, and the United States postal 
service was resumed. Johnson appointed provisional or tempo- 
rary governors in eabh conquered state under whose direction the 
white voters — with the exception of the leaders in secession 
who were not permitted to take part in the work of recon- 
struction — elected state conventions to revise the state consti- 
tutions. Then elections were held at which local and state 




Andrew Johnson 



RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 



453 



officers and members of the national House of Representatives 
were chosen. The new state legislatures met promptly, ratified 
the thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery, and elected 
United States senators. When these things were done President 
Johnson thought that the work of reconstruction was complete 
and that the representatives of the southern states ought to 
be allowed to return to their old places in Congress. 

But when Congress met in December, 1865, it refused to 
admit the representatives from the southern states. There 




Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner 
Leaders in Congress during the reconstruction period. 

were several reasons for this action. The members of Congress Congress 
declared that the president had exceeded his authority in what rejects ^ 
he had done. They said that it was the right of Congress to ^ork^ 
decide how the state governments in the South should be 
reconstructed. They felt that men who were officers in the 
Confederate army in March ought not to be members of the 
national Congress in December. The leaders in Congress, like 
Thaddeus Stevens in the House of Representatives and Charles 
Sumner in the Senate, lacked Lincoln's forgiving spirit and 
wanted the South to suffer for what it had done. Then nearly 
all the new southern representatives were Democrats and the 
Republican majority in Congress was not eager to see its control 



454 THE RECOVERY OF THE NATION 

threatened by the admission of so many meml)ers of the opposite 
pohtical faith. The wise and kind Lincohi might have per- 
suaded Congress to accept his plan for reorganizing the South, 
but the tactless, quarrelsome, and obstinate Johnson soon lost 
all influence over that body. 

Moreover, when Congress met in 1865 the people of the 
North were especially indignant at the recent acts of the new 
The rights of state governments in the South. No sooner were these goverri- 
thefreedmen ments formed than they faced the serious task of controlling 
the negroes to whom the war had given their freedom. Many 
of the freedmen, as the former slaves were now called, refused 
to work and wandered aimlessly about the country or drifted 
into the towns where they were often disorderly and sometimes 
criminal. In their alarm at this condition of affairs the southern 
people promptly passed laws to restrain the negro population. 
Young negroes were assigned to guardians, usually their former 
owners, for whom they must work for a time in return for their 
board and clothes. Vagrant negroes or tramps were fined and 
compelled to work for the man who paid their fine. The 
southern white people thought that such laws were absolutely 
necessary in order to protect their country from the lawlessness 
of a large body of idle negroes. To the people of the North 
these laws looked like an effort to restore slavery under another 
name, and Congress resolved tliat the states of the South should 
not return to their old places in the Union until the rights of the 
freedmen were adequately protected. 

In carrying out this purpose Congress passed the Civil 
Rights Bill, which gave the freedmen the protection of the 
The ^ federal government. The substance of this law was soon made 
amendment ^ P^^^"^ °^ ^^^ fourteenth amendment to the Constitution. This 
amendment began by declaring that, "All persons born or 
naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction 
thereof, arc citizens of the United States and of the state 
whcnnn they reside." This made it clear that the freedmen 
were citizens. The fourteenth amendment then went on to say : 
"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge 
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; 
nor shall any stat(; deprive any person of life, liberty, or prop- 
erty, without due process of law; nor deny to any person 
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It 



PRESIDENT JOHNSON-CONGRESS QUARREL 455 

was the plain intention of this amendment to protect the 
freedmen in all their civil rights. 

The fourteenth amendment did not give the freedmen the 
right to vote, but it did say that if any state refused them that 
right its representation in (,'ongress should be proportionally The South 
reduced. The southern states were given to understand that if rejects this 
they would ratify this amendment to the Constitution they 
would be restored to their places in the Union. Nearly all of 
them, however, rejected the fourteenth amendment, and in 
1867 Congress took their reconstruction entirely into its own 
hands and began that work all over again by passing the 
Recoiistruction acts. 

Under the plan of reconstruction provided in these acts, 
the seceding states, except Tennessee which had been restored 
already to the Union, were divided into five military districts, The plan of 
each of which was put under the command of a general in the Congress 
army. This military governor was to hold an election in each 
state at which all male citizens, white and black alike, except 
those excluded for engaging in rebellion against the United 
States, were to vote. At these elections the people were to 
choose delegates to state conventions which were to make new 
state constitutions giving the negroes the right to vote. Later, 
to make negro suffrage certain and permanent, it was put into 
the Constitution of the United States in the words of the 
fifteenth amendment: "The right of citizens of the Ignited The fifteenth 
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United amendment 
States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous 
condition of servitude." It was not until 1870 that the last 
of the southern states was finally restored to its old relation 
to the Union under this plan of Congress. 

The Quarrel between President Johnson and Congress. — 
In time of war the president exercises gi-eater power than usual 
because he is the commander-in-chief of the army and navy. The 
Congress is apt to be jealous of this increased authority of the President 
president and to try to deprive him of it upon the return of congress 
peace. This jealousy of the power of the president was one 
reason, though not the most important, why Congress rejected 
President Johnson's plan for reorganizing the southern states. 
Johnson was very angry when Congress failed to agree with him 
in this matter and denounced that body in coarse and violent 



456 



THE RECOVERY OF THE NATION 



Johnson's 
conduct 



language. Though he was honest and patriotic, the president 
was narrow-minded and headstrong. Unfortunately for the 
country, he lacked Lincoln's patience, wisdom, and power to 
feel sympathy for men who differed from him, and to win them 
to his support. President Johnson's quarrel with Congress, 
which began in 1865, continued with growing bitterness on 
both sides throughout his term. 

Johnson believed in the rights of the states and wanted to 
defend them against the encroachments of the federal govern- 



The Tenure 
of Office Act 




A Ticket to the Impeachment of President Johnson 

ment. He had risen from a very humble position in the moun- 
tains of East Tennessee, and like most poor white men of the 
South, he despised the negroes and had little sympathy with 
the purpose of the North to protect the rights of the freedmen. 
He vetoed the Civil Rights Bill and the Reconstruction acts, 
but Congress passed those measures over his veto by a two- 
thirds vote in each house. In a further effort to limit Johnson's 
pow(^r, Congress likewise passed a Tenure of Office Act in spite 
of his veto. The Constitution gives the president the power to 
appoint, with the consent of the Senate, nearly all the important 
officers of the government. Our presidents had always had the 
power to remove from office any appointive officer except the 
judges, who serve for life or during good behavior. But by the 
Tenvu'e of Office Act, the consent of the Senate was required for 



RISE AND FALL OF THE CARPETBAGGERS 457 

removals as well as for appointments. By this law Congress 
hoped to prevent Johnson from removing the officers who 
were favorable to its plans in the South. 

President Johnson believed that the Tenure of Office 
Act was unconstitutional, and when Edwin M. Stanton, the 
secretary of war, disobeyed his orders, he removed him from Johnson 
'"office. In 1868 the House of Representatives impeached John- impeached 
son for this act. After a long trial in the Senate, at which acquitted 
Chief Justice Chase presided, 'thirty-five senators voted for 
conviction and nineteen for acquittal. As a two-thirds vote is 
required to convict in cases of unpeaclmicnt, a single vote 
saved Johnson from conviction and liis consequent removal 
from office. It is now generally thought that his conviction 
would have, been unwise, because it might have encouraged 
future Congresses to try to remove by impeachment presidents 
with whom they failed to agree in politics. 

The Rise and Fall of the Carpetbaggers. — When the Civil 
War was over, a few northern men went to live in the South 
because they liked the country, wanted to have a hand in The "carpet- 
rebuilding it, and hoped to profit by the development of its baggers" 
rich resources. After the negroes were given the right to vote, 
many dishonest Republican politicians in the North hastened 
southward in the hope of winning offices and money for them- 
selves through the aid of the illiterate freedmen. Most of the 
newcomers from the North were poor, and the southern people 
scornfully called them all "carpetbaggers" because it was 
said that they brought all their possessions in a valise made of 
carpet. 

The great mass of the new negro voters were densely 
ignorant. Few of them possessed the intelligence and good 
judgment to manage their own affairs wisely, much less the Carpet- 
public business of the comnumities and states in which they baggers and 
lived. Under these circimistances the carpetbaggers and a few control the 
unscrupulous southern white men, who were called "scalawags". South 
in contempt, by their neighbors, found it an easy matter to con- 
trol the negro vote. They taught the freedmen that their former 
masters would make slaves of them again at the first opportu- 
nity, and that the only way in which the negro could guard his 
freedom was to vote^ the Repul)lican ticket. For several years 
the carpetbaggers and their negro followers were in complete 



458 



THE RECOVERY OF THE NATION 



control of most of the states in the South. The white poUticians 
held most of the higher positions, but many negroes were 
elected to office. 

The evils of carpetbagger rule in the South are ahnost 

beyond description. The illiterate negro office-holders had no 

Their rule understanding of the duties of their positions. There were 

was ignoraiit counties in Mississippi in which not a single justice of the peace 

could write his name. Only twenty-two out of one hundred 

and fifty-five members of one legislature in South Carolina 



and corrupt 




A Scene in the South Carohna Legislature 

could read and write, and more than two-thirds of the same 
body were so poor that they paid no taxes. Many of the 
carpetbaggers were dishonest, and the negro politicians quickly 
learned to profit by their example. The local and state govern- 
ments were filled with foolish extravagance, bribery, and graft. 
The members of the legislatures voted themselves large salaries, 
in some cases spent excessive amounts to furnish the state 
Capitols and other public buildings, and then stole the furniture, 
and, in one instance at least, maintained a restaurant at the 
capitol at which they could get food, cigars, and expensive 
liquors at public expense. 

All this shameless extravagance and waste had to be paid 



RISE AND FALL OF THE CARPETBAGGERS 459 

for by the taxpayers and taxes were soon excessively high. In 
five years of carpetbagger rule in Mississippi the state tax rate It meant 
increased fourteenfold. In many cases there was a similar in- "'^h taxes 
crease in the county tax rate. When the farmers and planters 
who were impoverished by the war could not pay these heavy 
taxes their land was seized and sold to get the money. One- 
fifth of all the land in Mississippi, for instance, changed hands 
in this way. The greedy politicians who were robbing the 
state bought such land, often ahriost "forasong." Besides the 
large amounts which they raised by taxation, the carpetbagger 
governments borrowed vast sums by selling the bonds of the 
states. Most of this borrowed money was wasted or stolen 
in connection with schemes for internal improvements, and in 
the end the states had little to show for it. In a few years the 
carpetbaggers and their negro followers brought most of the 
southern states to the verge of financial ruin. 

But the white people of the South found the social humilia- 
tion of the reconstruction days harder to bear than their poverty. 
Under the influence of their leaders from the North, the negroes And race 
began to think that they were the social equals of their former o^^^^^*^ *" *^® 
masters, and to demand the right to ride in the same cars, to 
live at the same hotels, and to send their children to the same 
schools as the white people. The white men of the South 
furiously resented every suggestion of social equality between 
the two races and fought against it with every power which 
they still possessed. The flames of race hatred were kindled 
and deeds of violence were done on both sides. If a tree may 
be judged by its fruit, the action of Congress in giving the right 
to vote to all the freedmen in the South at once was one of the 
most unwise and harmful policies ever adopted in our country. 

At last the time came when the white people of the South 
could no longer endure the misrule under which they lived and 
they resolved to stop it at any cost. As the United States The 
troops, still stationed in their midst, prevented open attacks Ku-Klux 
upon the carpetbagger governments, the southern people were 
driven to accomplish their purpose by other means. Secret 
societies were formed whose object was to protect the people 
from the lawless element among the negroes, keep the freedmen 
from voting, and drive the carpetlxaggers out of the country. 
One of these societies, the Ku-Klux Klan, grew to be a great 



460 



THE RECOVERY OF THE NATION 



The white 
race recovers 
control 



The solid 
South 



The recon 
struction of 
industry 



A change in 

southern 

farming 



organization which spiead over scvtn'al of the southern states. 
Disguised in long robes and hideous masks, tlie members of the 
Klan rode about the country at night frightening and threaten- 
ing the superstitious negroes and warning their white leaders 
to leave. When these methods failed to accomplish their pur- 
pose, harsher ones were used, and men were flogged and some- 
times shot or hanged. Angered by these acts of violence. 
Congress adopted severe measures against the Ku-Klux Klan. 
At the same time many of its own members, who saw that its 
methods were breeding a spirit of lawlessness in the South, 
abandoned it, and by 1873 the order had ceased to exist. 

Though the Ku-Klux Klan was short-lived it accomplished 
its purpose. Many of the negroes were so intimidated by it 
that they no longer took any part in politics. About the same 
time many southern white men, who had been denied all voice 
in the government because of their participation in rebellion, 
regained the right to vote. One by one the control of the 
southern states fell into the hands of their white inhabitants, 
and when the United States troops were finally withdrawn 
from the South in 1877, the last carpetbagger government dis- 
appeared. Because the carpetbaggers and negroes were Repub- 
licans, nearly all native white voters in the South became 
Democrats, and the South has continued solidly Democratic 
ever since the close of the reconstruction period. 

The Growth of a New South. — By 18/7 the work of political 
reconstruction was finished and the last carpetbagger had been 
driven from power. By that time the Union was fully reestab- 
lished and the white people of the southern states had recovered 
complete; control of their local and state governments. But 
the task of rebviilding the ruined industries of the South, and 
of restoring business prosperity in that section, lasted a great 
deal longer. For ten or fifteen years after the return of peace 
in 1865, times were hard for many of the people in the states 
which had formed the Confederacy. Then better days began 
to dawn, and slowly there grew up under free labor a new and 
more prosperous South than the old slave times had ever known. 

In the first years aftei- the Civil War a few of the planters 
tried to work their plantations as they had before 1861. But 
most of them either had no money to hire labor, or found the 
work of the freedmen very unsatisfactory. In the course of 



THE GROWTH OF A NEW SOUTH 



461 



• 4 • •■' 
it m* 

• • * 



time most of the 
large plantations 
were broken uji in- 
to small farms and 
sold or rented. 
The poor white 
men of tlu^ South 
who had never 
been ablc^ to com- 
pete with slave 
labor now began to 
l)uy land, and in 
time many of them 
became prosperous 
farmers. A few of 
the more thrifty 
negroes also became^ 
land-owners, but 
most negro farmers 
were "croppers," 
that is they raised 
cotton on rented 
land for a share of 
the crop. This system of 
the cotton states. As year 
under the plow, fertilizers 
cultivation were introduced 



«■« fl» f «(»..•••' . »»«• •»*»*'» 



,# « 



§#§•#•••* 





Sugar-cane Growing 



F-om Un:hru'nml A UwhrirooJ. Xcw York. 
Ring Spinning-frames in a Cotton-mill 

farming is still widely prevalent in 

s passed, more acres were brought 

were used, and better methods of 

with the result that our country 

is now producing about 

three times as many bales 

of cotton annually as it ever 

did in a single year with 

slave labor. 

Before the Civil War, 
cotton, tobacco, and sugar 
were the staple crops of the Diversified 
South. But with smaller agriculture 
farms and the wider use of 
farm machinery agriculture 
began to be diversified. 
More corn was raised and 



462 



THE RECOVERY OF THE NATION 



Lumber, on, 
coal, and iron 



more domestic animals were kept. Some rice had been grown 
since colonial times in South Carolina. Now great quantities 
of it are raised in Louisiana and Texas. Florida is famous for 
its oranges and its grapefruit. The climate of the South Atlan- 
tic states is peculiarly favorable to the growth of vegetables of 
all kinds, and truck-farming is widely prevalent in them. The 
northern cities furnish a market for vast quantities of south- 
ern strawberries and watermelons long before these delicious 

fruits ripen in the 
higher latitudes. 

The New South 
is no longer a land 
of a single industry. 
The mountains 
which extend from 
Maryland to north- 
ern Georgia and 
Alabama are cov- 
ered with splendid 
forests and under- 
laid with a wealth 
of coal and iron. 
Oil and gas abound 
in many places 
there. Their rivers 
provide abundant 
water-power which 
can be easily con- 
verted into elec- 
tricit3^ One of the 
richest oil fields in 
America is located 
in Oklahoma and Texas, and all the Gulf states are rich in timber. 
Phosphate ro(!k of inestimable value for fertilizer is found in 
Tennessee, South Carolina, and Florida. The existence of most 
of these natural resources was well known before the Civil War, 
but their development was not seriously undertaken until a 
new industrial life, based upon free labor, began to grow up in 
the former slave states. Now the South mines its own coal 
and iron, while oil-wells dot the plains of Oklahoma and 




From I'ntleniood h' Underwood, New York. 
A Coal Miner at Work 



THE GROWTH OF A NEW SOUTH 463 

Texas, and busy sawmills cut the pine of the Carolinas and 
Georgia and the cypress of Mississippi and Louisiana into the 
finest lumber. 

With its wealth of such raw materials and sources of power, 
as cotton, timber, iron, coal, and water-power, the southern 
section of our country lacked only free labor and railroads in The rise 
order to become a great manufacturing region. The Civil of manufac- 
War set its labor free, and a few years later the South entered the'^uth 
upon an era of rapid railroad building. Soon iron foundries 
and cotton-mills began to spring up as if by magic. By 1900 
the Carolinas spun more than one-half of the cotton grown upon 
their plantations. Sleepy villages grew to be bustling towns, 
while Atlanta, Birmingham, Chattanooga, and Nashville 
became great manufacturing cities. Twenty years after the 
Civil War closed, Henry W. Grady, an eloquent Georgian, said, 
"W^e have found out that the free negro counts for more than 
he did as a slave. We have challenged your spinners in Massa- 
chusetts and your iron-\yorkers in Pennsylvania. We have 
fallen in love with work." 

This marvelous growth of a New South has not been 
confined to business alone. Free public schools for both the 
white people and the negroes have been established in all the Progress in 
southern states, and illiteracy among both races has been ^""cation 
greatly diminished. The old colleges and universities of the 
South have grown stronger, and many new ones have been 
founded. Higher schools for the negroes, like those at Hampton, 
Virginia, and Tuskegee, Alabama, have done a useful work. 
While part of the negroes are still in a backward condition, 
many of them have become intelligent and industrious citizens. 

The negroes in the South have acquired considerable 
property during their first half century of freedom, but for 
many years they have had little part in the political life of the The negroes 
country. After the carpetbagger governments were overthrown, ^ ^^" 
the freedmen were kept from the polls Ijy threats or cheated in 
coimting the votes if tht^y persisted in voting. After a time 
the best white men of the South saw that so much violence 
and fraud in elections was debasing their own race, and they 
resolved to disfranchise the negroes by lawful means. The 
fifteenth amendment to the Constitution said that the right to 
vote should not be denied "on account of race, color, or previous 



464 



THE RECOVERY OF THE NATION 



The election 
of 1868 



condition of servitude," but it did not forbid educational or 
property tests for voters. Since 1890 nearly all the southern 
states have deprived the mass of the negroes of the franchise by 
such tests. In some states the qualifications for voting have 
beenso worded, that while applying to all negroes, they do not 
apply for tht^ present to all white men. 

Politics After the Civil War. — We have already noted how 
the Republicans in Congress quarreled with President Johnson 

over the political recon- 
struction of the southern 
states and failed in their 
attempt to remove him 
from office by impeach- 
mc^nt. The Republicans 
eagerly looked forward to 
the election of 1868 be- 
cause it would give them 
a chance to choose a 
president in sympathy 
with their policy in the 
South. When the time 
came they unanimously 
nominated General Grant 
for the presidency, and 
his popularity as the 
hero of the Civil War 
made him an easy victoi' 
over Horatio Seymour ol' 
New York, his Demo- 
cratic opponent. 

Grant was one of 
the greatest generals in our history, but his years in the White 
The "Liberal House added nothing to his fame. He carried out the ruthless 
Republican" reconstruction policy of his party, but before the close of his 
first term, many Republicans began to question the wisdom of 
that policy and to cherish a kinder feeling for the long-suffer- 
ing people of the South. Other Republicans were dissatisfied 
with the high tariff' which had been imposed during the war 
and wanted to reduce it, and still others were eager to attack 
the evils of the spoils system which had been growing steadily 




Harris & Ewing, Washington, D. C. 
Ulysses S. Grant 



movement 



POLITICS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 



465 



worse ever since the days of Andrew Jackson. In 1872 all these 
discontented elements called themselves "Liberal Republicans," 
and tried to form a new party. The Dcnnocrats joined them in 
nominating Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, 
for president. Greeley was one of the greatest editors that our 
country has ever had, but he was visionary and unpractical, 
and lacked neai'ly every qualification for the presidency. He 
was easily beaten by Grant, who was renominated Ijy the 
regular Republicans. 

Grant's second term 
in the presidency was 
even less creditable than 
his first. The years of 
carpetbagger misrule in 
the South were a time of 
much dishonesty in the 
political life of the whole 
nation. The governments 
of many of the rapidly 
growing northern cities 
fell into the hands of 
ignorant and corrupt 
politicians. In New York 
a gang of such men, led 
by "Boss" Tweed, con- 
trolled the government 
for some years and robl)ed 
the city of millions of 
dollars. President Grant 
was as honest a man as 
ever lived, but he was a poor judges of men and more than 
one unworthy politician imposed on him and secured an 
appointment to office. Thq misdeeds of some of these corrupt 
public servants resulted in several political scandals during 
Grant's second term in the presidency. Even his secretary of 
war was impeached for accepting bribes. These dishonest 
practices of some officials injured the Republican party, and the 
Democrats won the House of Representatives in 1874 and 
cherished high hopes of electing the next president. 

In 1876 the Republicans nominated Governor Rutherford 

30 




Corrupt 
politics in 
Grant's ad- 
ministration 



Horace Greeley 



466 



THE RECOVERY OF THE NATION 



election of 
1876 



B. Hayes of Ohio for the presidency. Samuel J. Tilden of 
The disputed New York was the Democratic candidate. Hayes was a quiet 
but able and honest man who had been a brave general in the 
Civil War. Tilden was a brilliant lawyer who had won fame 
by the successful prosecution of the notorious "Tweed Ring" 
in New York City. The election was very close. Tilden had 
one hundred and eighty-four undisputed electoral votes and a 
decided majority of the popular vote. Both parties claimed to 

have carried the states 
of South Carolina, Flo- 
rida and Louisiana. If 
the electoral votes of all 
these states were coun- 
ted for Hayes he would 
have one hundred and 
eighty-five and would 
be elected. The two 
houses in Congress 
could not agree as to 
which were the rightful 
votes from the three 
states in question, and 
finally the matter was 
left to an Electoral 
Commission composed 
of five senators, five 
members of the House 
of Representatives, and 
five justices of the Sup- 
reme Court. It hap- 
pened that eight members ot the Electoral Commission were 
Republicans and that seven were Democrats, and by a vote of 
eight to seven it decided that the Republicans had carried all 
the disputed states. By this narrow margin Hayes became 
president in 1877. 

Our Relations with Foreign Countries. — The years when 
our country was just recovering from the shock of the Civil 
War were a critical period in our relations with other nations. 
Shortly after the war began in 1861, France, England, and 
Spain, joined in sending troops to Mexico to protect the rights 



The 

Electoral 
Commission 




Rutherford B 'Hayes 



The French 
in Mexico 



OUR RELATIONS WITH FOREIGN COUNTRIES 467 

of their people in that country. As soon as their purpose was 
accomphshed, England and Spain withdi'ew; but Napoleon III, 
the ruler of France, overthrew the Republic of Mexico, and set 
up an empire in its stead. He placed Maximilian, the brother 
of the emperor of Austria, on the throne, and maintained his 
authority with French bayonets. This action was a serious 
violation of the Monroe Doctrine, but with a civil war on its 
hands, the United States could do nothing at the time but 
protest. When the war was over in 1865 our government told 
Napoleon III in the plainest words that the United States would 
not tolerate a foreign monarchy in Mexico and that he must 




The Alaska Purchase of 1867 



withdraw his troops from that country. A large army under The Monroe 
General Sheridan was sent toward the Mexican frontier, and Doctrine 
Napoleon soon promised to withdraw his forces. When the 
last French soldiers left Mexico in 1867, the Mexicans promptly 
captured the Emperor Maximihan and executed him. 

The same year that the French withdrew from Mexico 
Russia unexpectedly offered to sell Alaska to the United States, 
and Secretary Seward promptly accepted the proposition. The 
Not much was known of this vast northern region at that purchase of 
time, but it was supposed to be a barren waste of little value 
except for its fur trade. Some people found fault with the gov- 
ernment for buying a "vast area of rocks and ice," but as 
Russia had been a warm friend of the Union during the Civil 



468 



THE RECOVERY OF THE NATION 



The 

"Alabama 

Claims" 



War there was little serious objection to ratifying the treaty of 
purchase. In acquiring Alaska we made a better bargain than 
we knew, for its furs, fish, gold, coal, and timber are worth 
many times the $7,200,000 which we paid Russia for the 
countrJ^ 

We have seen how the Alabama and other commerce- 
destroying cruisers built in England for the Confederacy 
inflicted great damage upon American shipping during the 
Civil War. The United States declared that Great Britain 




The Arbitration Court at Geneva 
Where the "Alabama Claims" were settled by a tribunal of five men 

had violated her neutrality in permitting these ships to be 
built for the South, and insisted that she ought to pay for the 
damage which they did. For some years the British govern- 
ment refused to listen to this demand, but in 1871 the two 
nations made a treaty at Washington in which it was agreed 
that the "Alabama Claims," as they were called, should be 
submitted to arbitration. A tribunal of five men — one appointed 
by the United States, one appointed by Great Britain, and one 
each by Switzerland, Italy, and Brazil, met at Geneva, Switzer- 
The Geneva ^^^^^ ^^^ after listening to arguments by both sides decided 
award that Great Britain should pay the United States $15,500,000 



REFERENCES 469 

for the losses our ship-ovviKns suffered from the Alabama and 
other cruisers. This decision was vcny unpopuhir in England, 
but the British government promptly paid the money. By 
arbitrating the "Alabama Claims," and other disputes then 
and since. Great Britain and the United States have shown 
the world that th&re is a better way than war to settle differences 
between nations. 

REFERENCES. 

Wilson, Division and Reunion; A History of the United States, Vol. 
V; Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic; Rhodes, History 
of the United States, Vols. V-VII ; Andrews, The United States in Our Own 
Time; Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. Conditions in the South after the Civil War. Hart, American 
History Told by Contemporaries, IV, 445-458. 

2. The Contrast between Lincoln and Johnson. Rhodes, History 
of the United States, V, 516-522. 

3. The Story of Johnson's Impeachment. Rhodes, History of the 
United States, VI, 98-157. 

4. The Carpetbaggers and the Scalawags in Dixie. .'Andrews, The 
United States in Our Own Time, III, 130. 

5. Carpetbag Government in South Carohna. Hart, American 
History Told by Cordemporaries, IV, 497-500. 

6. The Ku-Klux Klan. Rhodes, History of the United States, VI, 
180-185. 

7. The New South. Andrews, The United States in Our Own Time, 
747-772. 

8. The Liberal Republican Movement. Rhodes, History of the 
United States, VI, 411-440. 

9. The Iniquities of the "Tweed Ring" in New York. Hart, Source 
Book of American History, 352-355. 

10. The Electoral Commission. Dunning, Reconstruction, Political 
and Economic, 323-341. 

11. The French in Mexico. Rhodes, History of the United States, VI, 
205-211. 

12. The Alabama Case. Andrews, The United States in Our Oum 
Time, 87-95. 



470 THE RECOVERY OF THE NATION 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Novels: Tourgee, A FooVs Errand; Bricks without Straw; Page, 
Red Rock; Garland, The Return of the Private, (in Main Traveled Roads); 
Cable, John March, Southerner; Glasgow, The Deliverance; Dixon, The 
Leopard's Spots; The Clansman. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. If there are any old soldiers of the Civil War still living in your 
community ask one of them to tell you how he was mustered out at the 
close of the war. Compare the home-coming of the soldiers in 1865 with 
the return of our men from Europe in 1919. 

2. Look up Lincoln's plan for reorganizing the southern states. What 
was the chief difference between the Lincoln-Johnson plan of reconstruction 
and the plan enacted by Congress? Which was the wiser plan? Why? 

3. Wliat did the thirteenth amendment do for the negro? The four- 
teenth ? The fifteenth? 

4. Were the deeds of the Ku-Klux Klan right? Is it ever right to 
break the law in order to accomplish a good purpose? Why? 

5. Why has the South been solid for the Democratic party ever since 
the Civil War? Has this "Solid South" been a good thing for the nation? 
Why? 

6. In what ways did the abolition of slavery benefit the poor white 
men of the South? 

7. Locate on the map ten important manufacturing cities in the 
South. What is the chief product made hi each of them? 

8. Would we have had a right to expel the French troops from Mexico 
by force? Why? 

9. Try to find other instances of the settlement of international dis- 
putes by arbitration besides the one described in this chapter. 

10. Question for debate: Resolved, That the right to vote ought to be 
restricted to those citizens who can read and write. 



CHAPTER XXIV 
New Ways of Working and Living 

The Age of Machinery. — In an earlier chapter of this book 
we studied how the Industrial Revolution, as the transition 
from hand labor to machine production is called, wrought The 
great changes in our ways of making things and in our mode Industrial 
of life. We saw how manufacturing was steadily transferred 
from the home and the small shop to the factory, how cities 
grew up around these factories, and how the men engaged in 
industry began to be divided into capitalists and laborers, each 
striving for a larger share of what they jointly produced. While 
these changes in the industrial life of our country began more 
than a century ago, they have been going on during the last 
fifty years more rapidly than ever before, and most of the 
important questions in our later history have grown out of them. 

An English traveler who visited the United States in 1865 
was astonished at the way in which Americans were making 
machines to do all kinds of work. "We find," he said, "a Machines for 
machine even to peel apples; another to beat eggs; a third ^^^''y 
to clean Knives;, a fourth to wring clothes." This American 
spirit of invention has been more active than ever in recent 
years. It has given us machines to milk cows, to dig ditches, 
to sweep floors, to record sales, to add columns of figures, and 
to do a thousand other things which were done by hand in 
the days of the Civil War. 

This ever- widening use of machinery is found in every 
department of our industrial life. For the last half century 
the invention of new agricultural tools and machines has gradu- Farming 
ally freed farm life of much of the hard work of earlier days. 
The progressive farmer now plows his fields with a sulky plow, 
fertilizes them with the aid of a manure-spreader, plants the 
seed with a drill, cultivates the growing crops with a riding 
cultivator, and harvests the grain with a self-binding harvester. 
The threshing-machine, the cotton-gin, and the corn-husker 
prepare the various crops for market. The mower, the hay- 
tedder, the horse-rake, the hay-loader, and the horse -fork do 

471 



472 NEW WAYS OF WORKING AND LIVING 



Manufac- 
turing 



the heavy work in haymaking. On many farms, pumping 
water, sawing wood, cutting fodder, shelhng corn, making butter, 
and many othei' things which were once done slowly and labori- 
ously by hand, are now done quickly and easily by machinery. 
But it is in manufacturing that machinery has come to 
reign supreme. Here the human hand now does little but guide 
the material to the machine, while the work is done by the 
tireless energy of steam or electricity. The various spinning- 
machines and power-looms, whose introduction began the revo- 




Frotti Underwood it Underwood, N. Y. 
Baling Hay on Irrigated Land in Arizona 

lution in the textile industry one hundred and fifty years ago, 
have been greatly improved by more modern inventors. Nearly 
every article of clothing that we wear is niade by a machine. 
Other machines make pins, screws, nails, and many other 
household necessities in countless numbers. *| Simple old-time 
tools like the shovel, the hammer, and the plane have been 
greatly enlarged and driven by steam. New tools have been 
invented for almost every conceivable purpose, and then 
machines have been made to make these tools. 



THE AGE OF MACHINERY 



473 




From UiidcrivooJ d- Underwood. N. Y. 
Electric Milking-machines at Work 



Nor has this marvelous development in the use of machinery 

been limited to the farm and the factory. The business office 

is equipped with dictaphones and typewriters. Type is set by Business 

machines, and daily 

papers are printed 

upon presses which 

print, cut, paste, 

fold, and count six- 

t}' thousand six- 
teen-page papers 

in a single hour. 

The paper upon 

which the news is 

printed is made of 

wood which passes 

through great pulp 

mills and paper 

mills on its way 

from the forest to 

the printing-house. The phonograph, the stereopticon, and the 

moving-picture machine have their part in the amusement 

and the education of 
the people. 

The general use of 
machinery in every line 
of industry has created Iron and 
an enoimous demand ^^^^^ 
for the iron and steel 
out of which most of 
the machines are made. 
Fortunately our coun- 
try is very rich in de- 
posits of iron ore. But 
it would be difficult to 
utilize this wealth of ore 
without the help of ma- 
chinery. Steam shovels 
load it upon the cars 

or boats w^iich carry it from the mines to the mills. In the 

iron and steel mills great blast-furnaces reduce the ore to pig- 




Courlesy of Federal 6laiAmildintj Co. 
Making Steel 
Hot bars passing through the rolling-mill. 



474 NEW WAYS OF WORKING AND LIVING 



Early 

sources 

power 



iron, some of which is converted into steel by other processes. 
Powerful machines draw the steel into rods or roll it into sheets. 
In recent years oreat quantities of steel have been used in build- 
ing ships, railroads, bridges, and for the framework of buildings. 
Hoisting machines and traveling cranes are used in handling 
this heavy structural material. Truly, the latest years of our 
history may well be called the age of machinery. 

New Sources of Power. — But the modern age of machinery 

would have been impossible without power to drive the 

machines. Many small tools and machines are worked by hand 

of and most agricultural implements are still drawn by horses, 

but from the first 
the machinery in 
factories was run 
by water power or 
by the steam-en- 
gine, and steam 
still drives the 
wheels of most of 
our factories and 
locomotives. At 
first, wood was used 
as fuel for the 
steam-engine, but 
coal gradually took 
its place, and for 
many years the coal 
miner has provided 
the source of the 
greater part of the power which has made possible our manufac- 
tures and our commerce. About forty years ago, petroleum, nat- 
ural gas, and electricity began to be used to run machinery. Now 
they rival coal as sources of power, and they are destined to 
play a still larger part in the industrial life of the future. 

The first oil-well in the United States was bored in noi'tli- 
western Pennsylvania in 1859. Since then, petroleum, or coal- 
Oil and gas oil, has been found in nearly every section of the country. The 
oil fields of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and California are 
especially rich. By the process of refining, the crude petroleum 
is separated into kerosene, gasoline, and many other useful 




Bryant Stwlh 
A Texas Oil Field 
Each derrick covers an oil-well from which the oil is 
pumped through pipe-lines to the refinery 



NEW SOURCES OF POWER 475 

substances. The kerosene lamp came into use soon after petro- 
leum was put upon the market, and the gasoline stove a few 
years later. From the beginning natural gas was frequently 
found in boring for oil, but at first it was allowed to go to waste. 
After 1870 it began to be used for heating houses and lighting 
streets, and some years later as a fuel in mills and factories. 
Crude petroleum is now coming into use as fuel in locomotives 
and steamships. 

After experimenting for more than a centurj', European 
inventors made the first practical gas-engine about fifty years 
ago. The first successful one in the United States was built The gas- 
in 1873, and these engines have been constantly improved and engine 
increasingly used since that time. In the gas-engine the explo- 
sion or very rapid burning of a mixture of gas and air in the 
cylinder drives a piston which turns the wheels. The gas burned 
comes from gasoline, though alcohol can be u.sed for the same 
purpose. The gas-engine has several decided advantages over 
the steam engine. It is simpler, safer, cleaner, can be started 
without tedious preparation, and can be operated by those 
who lack the knowledge and skill to run a steam-engine. The 
gas-engine has a great variety of uses in factories and upon 
farms. Because of its small size and light weight it is especially 
fitted to furnish the motive power for driving automobiles, 
trucks, motor boats, and aeroplanes. 

Electricity is the most important of the new sources of 
power. We have seen how Samuel Morse's electric tele- 
graph was invented in 1837. In 1866 Cyrus W. Field, after The age of 
years of patient effort, succeeded in establishing permanent electricity 
telegraphic communication between Europe and America. A 
few years later the dynamo, a machine for making electricity 
cheaply and on a large scale, came into use in America. It was 
soon found that the new force could be utilized in many ways. 
It was first extensively used for lighting purposes. In 1879 
Thomas A. Edison gave us the first practical incandescent light. 
At that time gas made from coal had taken the place of the kero- 
sene lamp for illuminating purposes in cities, but since then wher- 
ever the electric light is available it has steadily displaced all 
other methods of artificial lighting. About the time the electric 
light began to be used, Alexander Graham Bell invented the 
electric telephone. It quickly came into common use, and in 



476 NEW WAYS OF WORKING AND LIVING 



a few years men were talking from city to city. In 1899 an 
Italian named William Marconi brought to America a device 
for sending telegraph messages through the air, and three years 
later the first wireless message was flashed across the Atlantic. 
In 1885 the first electric trolley lines were built, and fifteen years 
later it would have been difficult to find a street-car drawn by 
horses in any Ameiican city. Soon electric railways were con- 
structed from town to 
town, and recently elec- 
tric locomotives began to 
be used on the railroads. 
Electric motors are also 
used in automobiles and 
for driving machinery in 
factories. The dynamos 
for generating electricity 
are driven by steam or 
gas-engines or by water 
power. Our supply of 
water power is almost 
unlimited, and it is cer- 
tain to be more and more 
widely used in th(^ foi'm 
of electricity in the fu- 
ture. Electric power has 
the peculiar advantage 
that it can be easily car- 
ried long distances by 
wire to the place where 
it is needed. _ It seems 
will be called the age 




Thomas A. Edison 
The greatest inventor of modern times. 



probable that the twentieth century 
of electricity. 

An Age of Railroads. — We have called the last fifty years 
of our history the age of machinery. It is just as truly an age 
The develop- of railroads. The ever-increasing products of our farms and 
ment of our factories, due in large part to the constantly widening use of 
new labor-saving machinoy, would have little value if we did 
not have enough railroads to distribute them among the people 
of our own country or to carry them to the seaports from 
which they can be sent to foreign markets. There were about 



railroads 



AN AGE OF RAILROADS 



477 



thirty thousand miles of railroad in the United States in 1860. 
The Civil War did much to show our people their need of more 
and better facilities for transportation, and when peace came 
in 1865, they quickly turned their attention to this problem. 
The earlier railroads, many of which were short, were joined 
together to form great railway systems, so that for the first 
time it became possible' to tak(> long journeys without changing 
cars. New roads were built so rapidly that by 1880 the railway 
mileage of the country was more than three times as great as 
it had been when the Civil War began. 




© Keystone Vieiv Co., MeadnUe. Pa. 
Power Dam and Locks in the Mississippi River at Keokuk, Iowa 

The greatest undertaking of the years just after the Civil 
War was the building of the first railroad across the continent. 
Ever since the gold seekers rushed to California in 1849 men 
had dreamed of a railroad to join the Pacific Coast to the East. 
In 1862 Congress encouraged two private companies to under- 
take the gigantic task of building such a road by lending them 
large sums of money and giving them vast tracts of land along 
the line of the proposed roadway. The first rails were laid on 
this road in 1864 and after the war the work progressed more 
rapidly. One company worked westward up the valley of the 
Platte River and the other eastward across the Sierra Nevada 
Mountains. With infinite patience and great skill both com- 



The first 
railroad 
across the 
continent 



478 NEW WAYS OF WORKING AND LIVING 

panies pushed steadily forward across deserts and over the 
passes of the Rocky Mountains until they met near Ogden, 
Utah, where the driving of a golden spike in May, 1869, marked 
the completion of the greatest feat of American enginoermg m 
the nineteenth century. In later years other railroads were 
built across the western mountains until now at least seven 
lines of steel bind the Far West to the rest of the country. 

For some years after the Civil War prices were high, money 
was plentiful, and men were tempted to engage in all sorts of 




The Joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads 
This event marked the completion of the first transcontinental railroad system. 

The panic of new enterprises in the hope of getting rich quickly. Much of 
1873 this speculation was done with borrowed money, and when the 

high prices of war times fell, the people found it more and more 
difficult to pav th(nr debts. The new railroads had been large y 
built with borrowed money, and at first some of them, especially 
in the West, did not have income enough to pay the int^^^est on 
what they owed. Under these circumstances theii- bonds tell 
in value, and it became difficult to sell them. The greatest 
banking house in the country, that of Jay Cooke & Co. helci 
great quantities of such bonds, and when it could not sell 
them it had to'close its doors because it could not pay its debts. 



AN AGE OF RAILROADS 



479 



This failure marked the beginning of the disastrous panic of 
1873. Soon other banks closed, business houses failed, factories 
were shut up, and many men were thrown out of work. Rail- 
road building almost ceased during this period of hard times. 

As the country recovered from the effects of the panic of 
1873 the building of new railroads was resumed, and it has gone 
steadily forward ever since. Our ninety-three thousand miles Improve- 
of railroad in 1880 had doubled by 1900, and within two decades jnents in 
about 75,000 additional miles of track had been added to the tion 




A Trunk-line Railroad 



railroads of the United States. The improvement of railway 
service has kept pace with the growth in mileage. Parlor, 
dining, and sleeping cars add to the comfort of travel, and the 
air-brake and other inventions of George Westinghouse have 
greatly increased the safety of fast trains. The refrigerator car 
makes it possible to send vegetables, fruit, meat, and other per- 
ishable products long distances to market. The work of the rail- 
roads in handling the bulk of the enormous inland commerce of 
our country is supplemented by coastwise ships which ply from 
port to port, by vessels which carry vast quantities of ore, 



480 NEW WAYS OF WORKING AND LIVING 



wheat, and lumbor on the great lakes, by numerous interurban 
trolley lines, and later by motor trucks which carry freight 
upon the public highways. 

Our Growing Wealth. — The last fifty years have witnessed 
a marvelous expansion in every line of industry in America. 
The Every section of our country has shared in this growth. The 

expansion of factories of the eastern and middle states have made more 
goods than ever before. A more diversified industry under a 
system of free labor has brought prosperity in a flood to the 
New South. The wheat, corn, hogs, and cattle of the prairie 

states have been pour- 
ing to market in an ever 
widening stream. The 
rich mineral resources 
of the Rocky Mountains 
have been revealed. 
Enterprise and industry 
have changed the Paci- 
fic Coast from a region 
of rough mining camps 
to a land of fertile, grain 
fields, fruitful orchards, 
and splendid cities. 

The unparalleled 
industrial activity and 
expansion of the last 
half century have piled 
up wealth in our coun- 
try beyond anything 
ever known before in the history of the world. The United 
States, "with seven per cent, of the earth's area and six per 
cent, of its population, produces seventy per cent, of the corn, 
sixty per cent, of the cotton, thirty-five per cent, of the tobacco, 
and fifteen per cent, of the cattle. It leads in the production 
of coal, petroleum, copper, and iron." The total wealth of the 
country is now more than two hundred billion dollars, and it 
is growing by many billions every year. 
The rate of ^ careful study of the figures opposite will give a vivid im- 

industrial prossion of the wonderful industi-ial progress of the United States 
progress since the Civil War. In that table the numbers are all millions. 



Our 

enormous 

wealth 



^^■H^ 


^^^^CZ" 


L^H^ 


■ Mgjg^^ 







Courtesy/)/ Ai'ir,,,,,,,, i ,,/,,„, Mining Co. 
A Copper Mine in Butte, Montana 
America leads the world in the production of copper. 







I 



OUR GROWING WEALTH 



481 



The progress of the United States in industry and the arts 
has been shown and wonderfully stimulated by the splendid 
displays of farm products, machinery, manufacturing goods, World's 
and the fine arts in the great expositions or world's fairs which ^^^ 
have been held at various times since the Civil War. The first 
of these was the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876. 
Other notable fairs of this Idnd were the Columbian Exposition 
or World's Fair at Chicago in 1893, the Pan-American Exposi- 
tion at Buffalo in 1901, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. 




A Scene at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition Held in San Francisco, California 



1920 



Millions of population 

Thousands of miles of railroad . . 
Value of farm products in millions 
Value of manufactured goods in millions 
Value of imports in millions . . . 
Value of exports in millions. . . . 
Tons of steel made in millions . 
Tons of coal mined in millions. 
Gals, of petroleum produced in millions 

31 



1870 


1880 


1890 


1900 


1910 

92 


39 


50 


63 


76 


52 


93 


166 


194 


244 


$1,958 


$2,212 


$2,460 


$3,764 


$8,900 


84,232 


$5,369 


$9,372 


$13,014 


$20,600 


$435 


$667 


$789 


$849 


$1,356 


$392 


$835 


$857 


$1,394 


$1,744 




1 


4 


10 


26 


29 


63 


140 


240 


411 


220 


1,104 


1,924 


2,672 


7,649 



110 (estimated) 
265 

$21,386(1918) 

$24,246 (1915) 

$3,100 (1918) 

$6,100 (1918) 

44 (1918) 

085 (1918) 

13,800 (1918) 



482 NEW WAYS OF WORKING AND LIVING 



Reasons 
for OUT 
industrial 
growth 



Louis in 1904, the Alaska- Yukon Exposition at Seattle in 1909, 
and the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco in 1915. 

The reasons for the rapid industrial development of our 
country in its later years are not hard to find. The United 
States is a vast and greatly diversified land. Nature has given 
it a rich soil, clothed it with splendid forests, and hidden 
beneath its smface immense supplies of coal, iron, copper, and 
oil. But the greatest reason for our unparalleled material 
prosperity is found in the character of the American people — 
in their intelligence, energy, inventive genius, daring enterprise, 
and eager absorption in business. 



Our people 
become 
machine 
workers 




The Old Way 
When one man performed by hand all the operations necessary to make a pair of shoes. 

Changes in Our Mode of Life. — The changes in industry 
during the last half century have influenced our ways of living 
even more than they have promoted our material progress and 
prosperity. In the days when men manufactured goods in their 
own small shops, each workman who made a pair of shoes, or a 
wagon, or a watch planned the thing he was to make, fashioned 
all its parts, and then fitted them together to form the finished 
product. His daily task made him a more intelligent, thought- 
ful, and self-reliant man. With the coming of the large factory 
all this was changed. The use of machinery brought division 
of labor. The factory worker spends his days in operating a 
machine which may perform only one small part in turning 



CHANGES IN OUR MODE OF LIFE 



483 



out the completed article. Many of the machines are so simple 
that women and children can run them quite as well and more 
cheaply than men; and consequently large numbers of women 
and children have come to be employed in factories. Running 
simple machines for long hours every day tends to make mere 
machines of those who do it. If the large number of our people 
who now work in factories are to be as good men and women as 
their ancestors were, they must have a short working day and 
wide opportunities for recreation and education to offset the 
deadening effect of their monotonous round of daily toil. 

The transition from hand labor to machine production 




The New Way 
Under the factory plan a worker performs but one operatiOD in making the complete article. 

has also wrought great changes in life on the American farm. 
In earlier days the farmer and the members of his famUy — in Old-time 
addition to planting, cultivating, and harvesting the crops and ^^^"^ ^^ 
caring for the domestic animals — churned butter, made cheese, 
canned or dried fruit and vegetables, slaughtered animals and 
cured meat, and made many of the tools and utensils used upon 
the farm or in the house. The boys and girls knew how to do 
many different kinds of work, because the old-time farm was 
a great school of manual training. The village shoemaker, the 
blacksmith, and the neighboring gristmill and sawmill furnished 
the farmer with most of the necessities of life that he could not 
make for himself. 



484 NEW WAYS OF WORKING AND LIVING 



Present-day 
farming 



The growth 
of cities 



The rapid development of the Industrial Revolution in the 
twentieth century has nearly destroyed the old-time farm life. 
The creameries and cheese factories, the great meat-packing 
establishments of Chicago, Kansas City, and Omaha, and the 
mills and machine shops of a hundred cities have taken over 
household industries. Shoes, flour, and lumber no longer come 
from village shops and mills but from the shoe factories of 
Massachusetts, the flour-mills of Minneapolis, and the sawmills 
of the Gulf States and of the Far Northwest. The farmer no 
longer tries to produce everything that his family needs, but 

devotes himself to 
growing the staple 
crops best adapted 
to his soil and his 
market. These he 
sells for money, 
with which he buys 
the various neces- 
sities of life. As a 
result of this change 
each section of the 
coimtry has devel- 
oped the kind of 
farming for which 
it is best fitted: 
truck growing on 
the Atlantic Coast, 
dairying near the great cities, the raising of cotton in the South, 
and the growing of winter wheat, corn, and live stock in the 
Middle West, and of spring wheat in Minnesota and the Dakotas. 
While a large part of the work of making things has been 
going from the farm and the village shop to the factory, many 
farmers' sons and daughters have been following it in order to 
secure employment. At the same time many newcomers from 
Europe have settled in the manufacturing towns where they 
found the greatest demand for their labor. As a result of these 
movements, many factory towns have grown to be large cities 
during the last fifty years. When the Civil War began, fully 
five-sixths of the American people were country dwellers; now 
less than one-half of them live on farms. The building of street- 




Undeni'ood ct Underwood, N. 
Lumber Mills at lone, Washington 



REFERENCES 



485 




social 
progress 



car lines, elevated railroads and subways, and the increasing 
use of automobiles have quickened the growth of cities by- 
enabling people to live at greater distances from their work in 
stores, offices, and factories. Where it has not been easy for 
cities to expand over more territory they have grown up into 
the air by erecting "skyscraper"' buildings from twenty to 
fifty stories high. 

The factories have vastly multiplied and cheapened goods of 
every kind, and the railroads have made it possible to distribute General 
them to all parts of the 
countr3\ We have a far 
greater variety of food and 
many more comforts and 
conveniences in our homes 
than people enjoyed fifty 
years ago. In many 
instances the people of 
our growing cities have 
provided themselves with 
beautiful parks, public 
libraries, and hospitals; 
while theaters, music 
halls, and moving-picture 
shows offer them amuse- 
ment at every turn. At 
the same time, free rural 
mail dehvery, the inter- 
urban trolley car, the 
telephone, and the auto- 
mobile have been bringing 
country people nearer to- 
gether and making life on the farm far less lonesome than it 
was a generation or two ago. 



Keystone View Co., Mendrille, Pa. 
Woolworth Building, New York 
The tallest oflSce building in the world. 



REFERENCES. 

Thompson, History of the United States; Bogart, Economic History 
of the United States; Coman, Industrial History of the United States; 
Sparks, National Development; Dewey, National Problems; Andrews, 
The United States in Our Own Time. 



486 NEW WAYS OF WORKING AND LIVING 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. Invention and Discovery. Sparks, National Development, 37-52. 

• 2. The Progress of the Country. Dewey, National Problems, 3-20. 

3. The Growth of Agriculture. Thompson, History of the United 
States, 410-419. 

4. The Growth of Manufacturing. Bogart, Economic. History of the 
United States, 408-417, 424-427. 

5. The Advantages of the United States as a Manufacturing Nation. 
Bogart, Economic History of the United States, 426-431. 

6. How Steel Is Made. Bogart, Economic History of the United 
States, 442-444. 

7. The Telephone, the Electric Light, and the Electric Motor. An- 
drews, The United States in Our Oivn Time, 671-678. 

8. The First Railway across the Continent. Paxson, The Last 
American Frontier, 324-339. 

• 9. The Centennial Exposition. Andrews, Tlie United States in Our 
Own Time, 195-200. 

10. The World's Fair at Chicago. Andrews, The United States in 
Our Own Time, 633-662. 

11. Life in the Country. Thompson, History of the United States, 
422-426. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Wliittier, Centennial Hymn; Bryant, Centennial Hymn; 
Holmes, Welcome to the Nations; Taylor, The National Ode. 

Novels: Carr, The Iron Way; Bisland, A Candle of Understanding ; 
Grey, The U. P. Trail; White, The Blazed Trail; The Riverman. 

Autobiography: Garland, A Son of the Middle Border. 



QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Make a list of all the labor-saving machines used in your own 
home. How many of the farm tools and machines named in this chapter 
have you ever seen m use? 

2. Where does the wood used in making paper come from? How is 
steel made? Locate the chief coal fields in the United States. 

3. What are the chief inventions made by Thomas A. Edison? What 
are the special advantages of wireless telegraphy? Do you know any 
places where electricity is made by water-power? 

4. Find on a map the chief transcontinental railroads of the present 
time. How does the railroad mileage of the United States compare with 
that of Europe? 



REFERENCES 487 

5. How do you account, for the great increase in the output of 
petroleum between 1900 and 1910? What effect did the Great War in 
Europe between 1914 and 1918 have upon our exports? 

6. Would you pi'cfer to work on a farm or in a factory? Why? What 
other reasons than the desire for better wages lead men to move from the 
country into the city? 

7. What are the chief manufacturing interests in your home city or 
in the city nearest to your home? What are tlie chief products raised on 
the farms of your state? 

S. What conveniences in our homes have come into general use during 
the last fifty years? 



CHAPTER XXV 



The Vanishing Frontier 



The making 
of our 
country 



Westward 
march of 
the pioneer 



Occupying 
the 

Mississippi 
Valley 



The Conquest of the Continent. — The history of our country 
began when httle bands of Europeans first gained a foothold 
upon the eastern coast of America three hundred years ago. 
Behind these first settlements there lay a vast untamed conti- 
nent. Pushing ever westward, our people have steadily con- 
quered the wilderness, clearing away the forests, cultivating the 
fields, opening the mines, building roads, and laying the founda- 
tions of towns and cities. During the last fifty years this con- 
quest of the continent has been completed. It is no longer 
possible for a young man to go west, settle upon cheap public 
land, and grow up with the country. The frontier in the 
United States has disappeared forever. Before we read the 
last chapter in its history let us briefly review the story of the 
long and heroic westward march of the American pioneer. 

The Appalachian mountain system confined the colonists 
to the Atlantic seaboard for more than a century. Just before 
the Revolution, Boone, Robertson, and other bold frontiersmen, 
led the vanguard of a swarm of pioneers through the gaps of 
the Alleghanies into the forest lands in the upper valleys of the 
Cumberland, the Tennessee, and the Ohio. These hardy back- 
woodsmen and the steady stream of settlers which followed 
where they showed the way, built log cabins, fought the Indians, 
set up new governments, and in the course of time, added to the 
young nation the great states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. 

Year after year the restless and the ambitious sought their 
fortunes in the West. Just after the War of 1812 a great wave 
of pioneers poured into the Mississippi Valley. The wheat and 
corn lands of the North and the cotton fields of the South 
began to be developed. Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, 
and Missouri were admitted into the Union between 1816 and 
1821. During the next thirty years the other great agricultural 
states in the heart of the Mississippi Valley were occupied, 
and American pioneers crossed the border into Texas, which 
they won from Mexico and at last added to the United States, 



MINING IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION 489 



In the meantime, roving fur traders, devoted missionaries, 
and adventurous army officers were finding the best trails across 
the continent. Soon after 1840 a few pioneers began to mak(^ Winning the 
their way to the attractive lands in western Oregon, and the ^^^ ^^^* 
discovery of gold in 1848 caused a rush of settlers to the Pacific 
Coast. California entered the Union in 1850, and Oregon 
became a state before the Civil War began. 

For a long time the vast region between Missouri and Cali- 
fornia was believed to be a land of dry plains and barren moun- 













.-^sk: 






4 

3M 












^iivit^ 



Keystone Vino Co., Meadnlle, Pa. 
A Silver Mining Camp Nestled in the Mountains of Nevada 

tains, and was called the great American desert. But this sup- Myth of the 
posed desert has been found to contain much fertile farm land, great 
pasturage for unnumbered cattle and sheep, great forests of desert 
the finest timber, and a wealth of minerals of ahnost every sort. 
The storj^ of the occupation and the development of the great 
plains and of the Rocky IVIountain region is the last chapter 
in the historj^ of the pioneer in the United States. 

The Growth of Mmmg in the Rocky Mountain Region. — 
We have seen how the discovery of gold drew great numbers of 



490 



THE VANISHING FRONTIER 



men to the Pacific Coast. Before long some of these men began 
to wonder if the precious metal which they sought might not 
be found in the vast mountain ranges which they had crossed 
on their way to the Californian gold fields. Lured by this 
thought, venturesome men wandered far and wide through the 
western mountains in search of gold. Most of these prospectors 
found little but hardship and disappointment, but here and 

there a few of them lo- 
cated deposits of gold, 
silver, and other val- 
uable metals. 

In 1859 a rich de- 
posit of silver was foimd 
in the western part of 
the present state of 
Nevada. When the 
news of this discovery 
reached California a 
throng of miners rushed 
across the Sierra Nev- 
ada Mountains. Pres- 
ently gold was found 
in the same locality, 
and in later years rich 
gold deposits were dis- 
covered at various 
places i n Nevada. 
Aljout the time that 
the first mining camps 
., ,, were establshed in Ne- 

Dovhlcdnv, Page rf- C'ik, A. 1. , 

Panning Gold vada, gold was discov- 

Only a few simple and inexpensive tools are needed orcd near the present 
for this kind of mining. • , c -r-x i 

Site 01 Denver and soon 
rich finds were made at other places in Colorado. The report of 
this discovery gtarted a new rush across the plains,much like that 
of the "Forty-niners" to California. The discovery of another 
rich gold field on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains in 
1861 led to the rapid development of the mining town of Helena 
in Montana. Sooner or later, prospectors found the precious 
metals in all the Rocky Mountain territories, and in 1874 gold 




MINING IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION 491 

was discovered in the Black Hills in the southwestern corner 
of South Dakota. The more recent finding of rich gold deposits 
in the Klondike region and at Cape Nome in Alaska has 
attracted swarms of treasure hunters to that northern land. 

The first gold foimd in the West was mingled with sand 
and gravel which the streams had carried down from the 
mountains and deposited in the valleys. The miner put this How gold 
gold-bearing earth into a pan with water, and shook the pan. ^^ mined 
As the particles of gold were many times heavier than the rest 
of the material they sank to the bottom of the pan wh(^re it 
was easy for the miner to gather them. Nuggets, or pieces of 
gold of considerable size, were sometimes-found. A man needed 
only a few simple and inexpensive tools to engage in this kind of 
mining for himself. Gold, silver, and other metals were later 
found in veins of rock in the mountains. This rock was dug out 
of mines which were often hundreds or thousands of feet 
deep. There are various ways of extracting the metals from 
the ore taken from the mines. In some cases it is crushed into 
powder by powerful stamping machinery, and then the metal is 
extracted from the powdered rock by chemical processes. In 
other cases the ore is put through a blast fm^nace in a plant 
called a smelter, and the metals are separated by means of 
heat. As a great deal of money is needed to buy the expensive 
machinery used in operating the mines and in extracting the 
metals from the ore, this kind of mining soon fell into the 
hands of great mining companies for whom the actual miners 
worked for wages. Great stamp-mills and smelters may now be 
seen at Denver and Pueblo, Colorado, at Butte, Montana, and 
at many other mining centers in the Rocky Mountain states. 

The early mining camps of the Far West grew like mush- 
rooms, and the life in them was always rough and sometimes 
lawless. A visitor to one of these camps describes its appear- Western 
ance in the following words: "Frame shanties pitched together mining 
as if by accident; tents of canvas, of blankets, of Inrush, of "^^^ 
potato sacks, and old shirts, with empty whiskey barrels for 
chimneys; smoldng hovels of mud and stone; pits and shanties 
with smoke issuing from every crevice; piles of goods and 
rubbish on craggy points, in the hollows, on the rocks, in the 
mud, in the snow — everywhere — scattered l)roadcast in pell- 
mell confusion." Sometimes a mining field was disappointing. 



492 THE VANISHING FRONTIER 

and then such camps vanished ahnost as quickly as they came; 
but when the new mines proved to be permanently profitable, 
law and order were soon established, more substantial houses 
were built, and the rude camp grew into a thriving town. 
\ The early Rocky Mountain mining camps were far away 

from the settled parts of the country, and at first their growth 
Pack-trains was hampered by the lack of facilities for transportation. The 
and freight- prospectors and early miners carried their tools and supplies 
ers wagons ^^^^ packhorses, but the establishment of permanent settle- 
ments at once created a demand for a regular freight service 
to bring in food and other needed supplies and to carry the 
output of the mines to market. Soon, men began to engage in 
the business of hauling goods from points on the Missouri 
River, in western Missouri or eastern Kansas, to the new mining 
camps in the Rocky Mountains. Long caravans of covered 
wagons, each drawn by several yoke of oxen, continued to be 
the freight trains of the plains until the first transcontinental 
railroad was completed in 1869. 

Ever since the first rush of settlers to California the need 
of a quicker mail and passenger service to the Pacific Coast 
The overland than that by way of Panama or the longer sea route around 
stage and the Q^pe Horn had been keenly felt. When mining towns began 
to spring up in the mountain country this need became greater 
than ever, and by 1860 overland stagecoaches were carrying 
passengers and the news of the East from Missouri River points 
to California in less than twenty-five days. But California 
wanted a faster mail service than this, and early in 1860 the 
pony express was established to carry letters across the conti- 
nent. With the mail in light saddlebags, riders on relays of fleet 
horses rode day and night, through rain and snow, across the 
plains and over the dangerous mountain trails. The horses 
were changed every few miles and the riders at longer inter- 
vals. On one occasion a boy named William F. Cody, who was 
later known to the whole country as Buffalo Bill, rode three 
hundred and twenty miles without resting. The best time made 
by the pony express from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, 
California, was a few hours less than eight days. When the 
first overland telegraph line was n^ady for business in 1861, the 
pony express service was given up, but the overland stage con- 
tinued to carry the mail across the plains until the coming of the 



THE CATTLE RANCH AND THE COWBOY 493 

railroad, and both the stagecoach and the freighter's wagon 
continued to serve the remote mining towns in the mountains 
until l;)i'aru'h railroads wore l)uiit to thcnn. 

The Cattle Ranch and the Cowboy. — For several hundred 
miles east of the Rocky Moimtains the plains have too little 
rain for profitable farming, but enough to make them good The 
pasture lands. The first white men who saw this region were ^}^^P^^^\°^ 
astonished at the vast herds of buffalo which roamed over it. 
A Spanish explorer of the sixteenth century says, "T saw such 




Kciislnilr 1" 

"Making a Drive" on a Texas Ranch 

a quantity of cows in these plains that it is impossible to 
number them." A traveler who visited western Kansas in 
1868 tells us that the plains were blackened with buffalo and 
that more than once the train had to stop to allow unusually 
large herds to pass. The Indians had always hunted the buffalo, 
and during the years just after the Civil War, white hunters 
killed great numbers of them for sport or for their hides which 
were made into robes. This slaughter went on so ruthlessly that 
in twenty years the last herd of buffalo was exterminated. 



494 



THE VANISHING FRONTIER 



As the buffalo disappeared, herds of cattle took their places 
on the grassy plains. Ever since colonial days many cattle 
have been raised on the frontier, but when the pioneers reached 
the great plains they engaged in cattle raising on a far larger 
scale than ever before. The first western cattle ranches were 
in Texas, but the pasturage was better farther north, and the 
Texas cattlemen began to drive their herds in that direction. 
Diu'ing the last fifty years the dry plains extending from Mexico 
to the Canadian border have become a vast cattle country. 

In the early history of the cattle business in the West the 




^ mf 



© Keystone View Co., McadiilU, Pa. 
Method of Throwing a Cow 

stock of each ranclun- was branded with the owner's mark and 
The cowboys permitted to roam freely over an open range many miles in 
extent. Hard-riding cowboys on fleet ponies looked after the 
herds, branded the calves, kept the cattle from wandering too 
far, and saw that they had water. Sometimes the cowboys 
had to fight cattle thieves, and they often quarreled with other 
ranchers over the extent of their ranges and with sheep herders 
whom they especially hated because their flocks of sheep injured 
the pasturage for the cattle. In the autumn the cowboys 
rounded up the cattle, separated from the herd the animals that 



THE CATTLE RANCH AND THE COWBOY 495 

were to be sent to market, and then allowed the rest to wander 
back on the range. In the early days the western cattle were 
often driven long distances to market, but after the railroads 
reached the cattle country they were shipped to the farms of 
Iowa or Illinois to be further fattened or sent directly to the 
slaughter houses of Chicago, Omaha, and Kansas City. 

In the early history of the cattle industry on the western 
plains, little care was given the stock in the winter. The cattle pj.^^ ranch 
lived upon the dried grass and had only such shelter from the to farm 




© Kejsione View Co., MmdviUr, ]'a. 
The Union Stock Yards at Chicago, Illinois 

storms as they could find in the valleys. Sometimes large 
numbers of them perished in the blizzards which sweep over 
that treeless country. At first the open country over which 
the cattle roamed belonged to the United States, but as morei 
settlers arrived, this public land steadily passed into private 
hands. When the cattle rancher came to own his range he 
fenced it, dispensed with the services of most of his cowboys, 
introduced better breeds of cattle, built barns and sheds to 
shelter them in bad weather, and cut hay to feed them in winter. 



496 



THE VANISHING FRONTIER 



With these changes the rude ranch house became a farm home, 

civil government was estabhshed in the cattle country, schools 

were opened, and in the course of time the roving cattlemen 

and picturesque cowboys of the earlier days on the plains became 

substantial and prosperous citizens of organized communities. 

The Farmers Occupy the Far West. — In 1865 the frontier 

Westward ^^^ across the prairies of southern Minnesota, northwestern 

march of Iowa, and eastern Nebraska and Kansas. During the next 

the pioneers twenty-five years pioneer farmers pushed steadily westward 




Kryxtone View Co., Mmdville, Pa. 
A Round-up on a Kansas Cattle Ranch 

upon the treeless plains, until by 1890 they occupied nearly all 
the fertile land east of the Rocky Mountains that can be 
cultivated profitably without irrigation. Several causes stimu- 
lated this rapid settlement of the prairie country. It had always 
been the policy of our national government to sell public land 
to settlers at a low price, but in 1862 Congress passed a Home- 
stead Act which gave one hundred and sixty acres of land to 
any citizen who would live upon it for five years and pay a 
small fee. After the Civil War many dis(;harged soldiers, as 
well as other ambitious young men from all parts of the country, 



THE FARMERS OCCUPY THE FAR WEST 497 

took advantage of this law to secure new homes in the West. 
I Then the railroad companies, which built roads across the 
plains ahead of the pioneers, did everything they could to attract 
settlers to this region in order to make business for themselves. 
As a result of all these causes, land-hungry pioneers quickly 
populated the present states of Kansas, Nebraska, South 
Dakota, and North Dakota. In fact, the rich wheat lands of Rapid settle- 
the Dakotas were settled so rapidly that sometimes a whole ^^^ ^^. ■ 
county without an inliabitant at the beginning of a year would country 




On the Santa Fe Trail 



be filled with settlers before its close. For years the frontiers- 
men had coveted the attractive district of Oldahoma in Indian 
Territory, but it had been reserved for the Indians, and intruders 
upon it were driven ofT by United States soldiers. Finally this 
region was purchased from the Indians by the government, and 
at noon on April 22, 1889, it was thrown open to settlers. 
Droves of them were already camped upon its boixlers awaiting 
the hour to enter. "Whole outfits for towns, including portable 
houses, were shipped by rail, and individual faniilies, in pic- 
turesque, primitive, white-covered wagons, journeyed forward, 
stretching out for miles in an unbroken line. The blast of a 
32 



498 



THE VANISHING FRONTIER 



Pioneer life 
on the prairie 



bugle at noon on a beautiful spring day was the signal for a 
wild rush across the borders." Before nightfall thousands of 
farm claims were entered and several town sites were laid out. 
Thriving cities grew up in Oklahoma with astonishing rapidity. 
Similar scenes attended the opening to settlers of other Indian 
reservations in the following years. While eager settlers were 
thus securing the last available farm lands on the plains, and 
even pushing across our northern border into the wheat lands of 
the Canadian Northwest, other pioneer farmers were Ijringing 
under cultivation vast wheat-fields in California, Oregon, and 
"Washington and planting the orchards which now bear the 

fruit for which our 
Pacific Coast is 
justly famous. 

At first the life 
of the settlers on 
the western prairies 
was very unlike 
that of the fron- 
tiersmen in the 
wooded country. 
The pioneer in the 
forest-covered lands 
had to spend a life- 
time of hard lal)or 
in felling and burn- 
ing the trees and in 
clearing the fields of stumps. The owner of a prairie farm 
could bring it vuider cultivation as fast as he could break the 
heavy sod with his plow. On the other hand, the settlers on 
the open prairies seriously missed the timber which the earlier 
pioneers found all about them. Ofttimes there was not a single 
tree in sight on the plains as far as the eye could reach. 
Many of the pioneers on the prairies built the walls of their 
first houses of blocks of sod. When the railroads began to 
bring lumber to these treeless regions, the sod hovels were 
gradually replaced by more substantial houses. Then school- 
houses and churches were built, and in a little while the new 
communities in the West grew to be very much like the older 
places farther east from which the settlers came. 




Cmirtesy of the Adrnnce-Riimehj Thresher Co., Inc. 
Plowing by Oil-Power 
This powerful tractor, using kerosene oil as a fuel, pulls 
a 4-bottom plow and does the work of many horses. 



THE FARMERS OCCUPY THE FAR WEST 499 



' Most of the farms in the new West, like those in tlie older 
parts of the country, are of moderate size, and the greater part 
of the work upon them is done by their owners. But in the Farming on a 
wheat lands of the Dakotas, California, and Washington, some ^^^ge scale 
men began to cultivate enormous tracts of land, often thousands 
of acres in extent. Large numbers of farm-hands were employed 
upon these great farm§, and in the course of time some very 
wonderful machines came to be used upon them. Great 
traction engines draw a row of plows, harrows, and drills so 




fe- M 



:X 







Photo from Putnam mid Valentine, Los Angeles, Call}. 
The Roosevelt Dam in Arizona 
Dams'like this transfonn the desert lands of the West into fertile farms. 

attached to each other that the ground is plowed, pulverized, 
and seeded by a single operation. When the wheat is ripe, 
combined harvesters and threshers, sometimes drawn by a 
large number of horses and sometimes driven by steam, cut and 
thresh it and deliver it in bags ready to be hauled to market. 
We have seen how the country between Kansas and Cali- 
fornia was first occupied by the miner and the cattle rancher. 
So little rain falls in most of this vast region that for a time 
it seemed to offer no inducements to the farmer. But the 



500 



THE VANISHING FRONTIER 



Mormons, who settled in Utah in 1847, had proved that when 
the water from the rains and snows in the high mountains was 
made to flow upon the dry plains below, they would produce 
abundant crops. When public land with sufficient rainfall for 
farming purposes grew scarce, men began to reclaim some of 
the arid land on the plains or in the mountain valleys by irri- 
gation. This is done by bringing the water from the rivers in 
large ditches and distributing it by means of smaller ditches to 
the cultivated fields. Much of this work is in the hands of 




General Custer's Last Fight 

irrigation companies, which build dams in the rivers to retain 
the water until it is needed, dig the main ditches, and sell to 
each farmer the right to use a certain amount of water. In 
1902 the United States organized a Reclamation Service to aid 
in reclaiming the arid lands. The picture of the famous Roose- 
velt dam in Arizona on page 499 is a good illustration of the 
kind of work our government is doing to transform the deserts 
of the Far West into f(n-tile farm lands. The farmers who buy 
the land irrigated by the United States must pay back to the 
government the cost of the irrigation works, and the money 
they pay is then used to reclaim more land in other dry regions. 




SCALE OF MILES 

J i(!o 25o 3S0 i3o 

I Forest Reserves are shown thua L-J^ 



117 Longitude 112 West from 107 Greenwich 10! 



THE LAST INDIAN WARS 501 

The Last Indian Wars. — When the Indian tribes of the 
Far West saw wliitc buffalo hunters, cowboys, and raih'oad 
builders invading their country and killing or driving away the Trouble with 
game, they fought to keep these frontiersmen from theii hunting- the western 
grounds, as the red men had fought the pioneers ever since the 
early colonial days. Between 1865 and 1880 there were numer- 
ous Indian wars in the West. The most serious of these bloody 
contests were waged with the Modocs in northern California 
and Oregon, with the Comanches and Apaches in western Texas, 
New Mexico, and Arizona, and with the Sioux in the upper 
valley of the Missouri. 

The last great war with the red men was fought in 1876. | 
By a treaty the Sioux had been given the right to live in the I 
western part of South Dakota and to hunt in what is now eastern The Sioux 
Montana. After gold was found in the Black Hills, miners ^^^ 
began to flock to that region. The Indians protested against 
the coming of these intruders, but little attention was paid 
to their complaints. One Sioux chief said: " If you white men 
had a country which was very valuable, which had always 
belonged to your people, and which the Great Father had prom- 
ised should he yours forever, and men of another race came to 
take it away by force, what would your people do? Would they 
fight?" The Sioux resolved to fight, and early in 1876, troops 
were sent against them. Led by Sitting Bull, one of their 
chiefs, the Indians fought fiercely. In a battle on the Little 
Big Horn River in Montana, General George A. Custer, who 
had won fame as a dashing cavalry officer in the Civil War, 
was surrounded, with two hundred and sixty of hismen,by an 
overwhelming force of Indians. As they rode their ponies in Custer's last 
a circle around Custer and his heroic band, the Indians poured fight 
a deadly fire upon them until the last soldier was slain. But 
this Indian victory only prolonged the war a little. In the end 
the Sioux were conquered and promised to give up their hunting- 
grounds and live upon the land assigned to them. Sitting Bull 
and some of his warriors fled to Canada, but a few years later 
they too agreed to return to the reservation. 

- For fifty years before 1876 our government had been , 
trjdng to get the Indians to live upon reservations, as the | 
tracts of land assigned to the various tribes were called. This ' ^ 
plan had never worked very well. The Indians were restless 



502 



THE VANISHING FRONTIER 



Later treat- 
ment of the 
Indians 



A group of 

western 

states 



The 

Mormons 
in Utah 



and discontented, and in many cases the agents who were 
appointed to care for their interests abused them and cheated 
them shamefully. After the last great Sioux war an effort 
was made to deal more justly with the red men. In 1878 the 
first Indians were sent to a famous normal and industrial school 
for negroes at Hampton, Virginia, and the following year a 
great Training and Industrial School for Indians was established 
at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Other industrial schools were opened 
at various places in the West, and soon thousands of Indian 
children were learning the arts of civihzed life. In 1887 the 
government began to give each Indian a farm of his own. Edu- 
cation in civilized ways of living and the possession of land are 
steadily transforming the three hundred thousand Indians still 
left in oiu" country from their former barbarous condition into 
peaceful and prosperous citizens of the United States. 

Our Newest States. — You will remember that the terri- 
tories of New Mexico and Utah were organized by the Com- 
promise of 1850, and that Kansas and Nebraska were given 
territorial governments by the famous Kansas-Nebraska Act 
of 1854. When the cattlemen began to occupy the plains, and 
the miners to settle in the mountain regions of the West, other 
territorial governments were created as they were needed, and 
when Congress thought that these territories ought to become 
states, they were admitted to the Union. Thus Kansas entered 
the Union the year the Civil War began, and Nevada was made 
a state in 1864. Nebraska was admitted in 1867, and in 1876 
Colorado became "the Centennial state." In the territories 
near the Canadian border, population grew more slowly, but 
in time they too began to clamor for statehood. South Dakota, 
North Dakota, Montana, and Washington entered the Union 
in 1889, and Idaho and Wyoming followed them the next year. 

Under the leadership of Brigham Young, the Mormons 
began to settle in Utah as early as 1847. The population of 
that territory increased steadily, but the American people 
opposed its admission into the Union as a state as long as the 
members of the Mormon church taught and practised polygamy. 
In 1882 Congress passed a severe law against this evil practice, 
and during the next five years several hundred persons in Utah 
were punished under this act. In 1890 the president of the 
Mormon church renounced polygamy and urged the members 



OUR NEWEST STATES 



503 



of his church not to practise it. When Congress was convinced, 
by their putting a prohibitive clause in their state constitution, 
that the Mormons were sincere in giving up polygamy, it 
admitted Utah into the Union in 1896. 

The territory of Oklahoma, whose astonishing growth we 
have already noted, soon had enough population to justify it in 
aslving for statehood, l)ut its request went unheeded for several The latest 
years because the Republicans who controlled Congress did states 
not want to create another Democratic state. At last Okla- 
homa was united with Indian Territory and made a state in 
1907. New Mexico and Ari- 
zona grew more slowly than 
the other western territories 
and were not admitted into 
the Union until 1912. The 
admission of these two in- 
creased the number of states 
in the Union to forty-eight. 

The mines, forests, 
grazing lands, and irrigated 
farms of our newest states 
are sufficient to account for 
their steady growth in 
wealth and population. 
But in addition to their 
permanent residents, thou- 
sands of visitors are at- 
tracted to these states 

every year by their health- ^tone National Park, Wyoming, 
giving climate and by the splendor of their scenery. Large 
numbere of invalids, especially from among those in the early 
stages of tuberculosis, seek the mountain states of the West 
because of their clear, dry, and invigorating air. Even larger 
numbers of tourists are drawn to the same region by the mag- 
nificence of its mountains and by the fame of such natural 
wonders as the falls of the Yosemite Valley in California or the 
matchless Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in Arizona. 
Some of the grandest areas in the western mountains have 
been reserved by our national government as perpetual pleas- 
ui'e grounds for the people. Notable among these arc the 




The climate 
and scenery 
of the Far 
West 



l\i i/:iti'.'i' I ' ." ( '•■ , Mniiliillc, Pa. 
Giant Geyser Cone 
The largest geyser in the world, Yellow- 



504 THE VANISHING FRONTIER 

Rocky Mountain Park near Denver, the Yellowstone National 
Park in northwestern Wyoming, with its cui'ious and interest- 
ing hot springs and geysers, and the new Glacier National 
Pai'k in northwestern Montana, with its towering peaks, mighty 
glaciers, and lovely mountain lakes. 

REFERENCES. 

Thwaites, Rocky Mountain Exploration; Shinn, The Story of the Mine; 
Paxson, The Last American Frontier; The New Nation; Sparks, National 
Development; Andrews, The United States in Our Own Time; Bassett, A 
Short History of the United States. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Westward Movement. Paxson, The Last Atncrican Frontier, 
1-13. 

2. The Rocky Mountain Region. Bassett, A Short History of the 
United States, 676-683. 

3. Where Little Rain Palls. Brigham, Geographic Influences in 
. American History, 230-254. 

4. Mountain, Mine, and Forest. Brigham, Geographic Influences in 
American History, 255-285. 

5. "Pike's Peak or Bu.st!" Paxson, The Last American Frontier, 
138-155. 

6. The Overland Mail. Paxson, The Last American Frontier, 174-191. 

7. The Last of the Frontier. Paxson, The New Nation, 142-160. 

8. The Far West. Sparks, National Development, 251-264. 

9. Our Treatment of the Indians. Hart, Source Book of American 
History, 366-369. 

10. Indian Wars in the West. Bassett, A Short History of the United 
States, 683-686. 

11. Custer's Last Fight. Andrews, The United States in Our Own 
Time, 186-193. 

12. How the Railroads Hastened Western Settlement. Paxson, The 
Last American Frontier, 372-386. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Ballard, The Pacific Railway; Whittaker, Custer's Last 
Charge; Stedman, Custer; Longfellow, The Revenge of Rain-4n-the-Face; 
Whittier, On the Big Horn; Sigourney, Indian Names, 



REFERENCES 505 

Stories: Adams, The Log of a Cowbotj; The Outlet; Reed Anthony; 
Cowman; Garland, Boy Life on the Prairie; Wister, The Virginian; 
Memberc of the Family; Foote, Coeur d' Aline; Led Horse Claim; Hough, 
The Girl at Halfway House; Jackson, Ramona; Paterson, Son of the 
Plains; Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage; Sabin, Buffalo Bill and the 
Overland Trail; Talbot, My People of the Plains. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. In what ways does this chapter show the influence of the physical 
geography of a region upon its history? 

2. Have you ever read any stories about life in the western mining 
camps? What stories about cowboys and their work have you read? 
Wliat is a "round-up"? 

3. What two western states produce vast quantities of copper? 
Why is there a great demand for copper at the present time? What far 
western states produce coal? 

4. What is meant by "dry farming"? What are the chief wool- 
growing states in the Rocky Mountain region? What is a forest reserve? 
What use is made of our western forest reserves? 

5. How much of the arid West is it possible to irrigate? Would you 
prefer to have been a pioneer in the forest land or on the prairie? Why? 

6. Is it probable that we shall ever have more than forty-eight states 
in the Union? 

7. Were the white men or the Indians the more to blame for the 
Indian wars in our history? 

8. Why is the disappearance of the frontier an important fact in our 
history? 



CHAPTER XXVI 



Big Business and Social Unrest 



Twenty 
years of 
Republican 
rule 



Hayes 



Garfield 



Parties and Presidents. — The Republican party played a 
leading part in saving the Union and in freeing the slaves during 
the Civil War. Naturally this party was very strong when 
that war was over, and for the next twenty years all our pr(^si- 
dents belonged to it. You will recall how the Republicans put 

General Grant in the 
White House for two 
terms, and elected 
Hayes to succeed him in 
1877, after the closest 
political contest in our 
history. President 
Hayes gave the country 
a good administration, 
but the Democrats 
sneered at him because 
they thought he had not 
been fairly elected, and 
the Republican politi- 
cians disliked him be- 
cause he would not do 
their bidding. By with- 
drawing the Federal 
troops from the South, 
where some of them had 
James A. Garfield ^ggn Stationed cver 

since the Civil War, Hayes did much to bring about a better 
feeling between the sections. 

In 1880 some Republicans wanted General Grant to run 
for a third term, while many others favored James G. Blaine 
of Maine, but in the end the Republican convention nominated 
James A. Garfield of Ohio. Winfield S. Hancock of Pennsyl- 
vania, a gallant soldier with a brilliant record in the Civil War, 
was the Democratic candidate in this election. After a close 

50e 




PARTIES AND PRESIDENTS 



507 



Arthur 



contest the Repuljlicans won, and Garfield became president in 
1881. Few of our presidents have been so well qualified by 
training and experience to fill the highest office in the land. 
The story of Garfield's life is one of the most inspiring in our 
history. After earning his way through school and college he 
became successively a college president, a fearless general in 
the Civil War, and for many years a prominent leader in the 
national House of Representatives. 

The people expected great things of President Garfield, but 
in less than four months 
after his inauguration 
he was shot by a dis- 
appointed office-seeker. 
At first it was hoped 
that he might recover, 
but after weeks of suffer- 
ing he died in September, 
1881. The vice-president, 
Chester A, Arthur of 
New York, at once suc- 
ceeded to the presidency. 
Arthur was not widely 
known before his election 
to the vice-presidency, 
but he proved to be an 
able president and gave 
the country a clean and 
wise administration. 

In 1884 the brilliant 
Republican leader, James 
G. Blaine, won the presi- 
dential nomination which he had sought for years. Grover Cleveland 
Cleveland, a lawyer of Buffalo who had recently been elected 
governor of New York by a large majority, was the Demo- 
cratic candidate. After a close and bitterly contested cam- 
paign, Cleveland was elected, and in 1885 the country had a 
Democratic president for the first time since the days of James 
Buchanan. During his first term, President Cleveland urged 
several much-needed reforms upon Congress, but he failed to 
get most of the new laws which he wanted because the Senate 




Chester A. Arthur 



508 



BIG BUSINESS AND SOCIAL UNREST 



Harrison 



Cleveland's 
second term 



New ways of 
doing busi- 
ness 



was still controlled by the Republicans. In 1888 President 
Cleveland sought a second term. Senator Benjamin Harrison 
of Indiana, a grandson of President William Henry Harrison, 
an able lawyer and a gallant general in the Civil War, was the 
Republican candidate in this campaign. Harrison won the 
election and served as president from 1889 to 1893. 

In 1892 drover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison were 
again rival candidates for the presidency, and this time Cleve- 
land won. His second 
term, which ended in 
1897, was filled with 
bitter political strife. 
Grover Cleveland was 
one of the most fearless 
and independent presi- 
dents in our history. It 
has been truly said of 
liitn that he was a man 
I if "unflinching integ- 
rity and ro]~)Ust common 
sense. ' ' The story of his 
efi'orts to promote the 
welfare of the people 
will be told in succeed- 
ing sections of this 
chapter. 

The Coming of Big 
Business. — The period 
covered by the presi- 
dencies of the men 
named in the last section was the time when the use of new 
machines, the discovery of new sources of power, and the rapid 
development of the natural resources of the country were making 
marvelous changes in the life of our people. During the last 
thirty years of the nineteenth century men were beginning to 
carry on business on a scale never known before in the historj^ of 
the world. Groups of railroad companies were joined together to 
form a few great railway systems, each controlling thousands of 
mil(>s of track. Meanwhile, many small telegraph companies were 
consolidated into the great Western Union Telegraph Company. 




Benjamin Harrison 



THE COMING OF BIG BUSINESS 



509 



But most of the big business concerns which grew up during 
the latter part of the nineteenth century were formed by uniting 
manufacturing enterprises which were engaged in making the 
same thing. When all, or nearly all, the producers of a certain 
article combined their various plants into one great business 
concern the combination was called a trust. 

The Standard Oil Company was one of the earliest trusts. 
At first this company was only one of many firms engaged in 
the business of producing and refining petroleum. But by get- The origin of 
ting lower freight rates from the railroads than its competitors *^® trusts 
paid, and by other unfair methods, it secured control of its rivals, 
or drove them out of business. At the same time it made great 
improvements in the methods of transporting and refining 



1 

"• r 



'^: /Tf^^^^-^^'^wr 







4.— ^^ 



5^ -<!t ^k^^*^Jll^± v^^^-***^ 



Cijurttsiij ijj Armuar & Co., Chicago. 
A Bird's-eye Viev/ of a Large Meat-packing Establishment 

petroleum. By 1882 the Standard Oil Company practically 
controlled the oil business of the country and had become a 
great trust which paid enormous profits to its stockholders. 
The success of the Standard Oil Company led to the formation 
of similar combinations in other fields of industry. The dis- 
tillers established the Whiskey Trust, the sugar refiners united 
in the Sugar Trust, and in a few years the producers of coal, 
of iron, and of many kinds of manufactured goods formed 
gigantic trusts each of which tried to handle all the business 
in its line. 

The trusts soon proved that there are many advantages in 
doing business on a large scale. A much wider use of labor- 
saving machinery is possible in a big factory than in a small The 
place. The big business can often get its raw materials at lower of t^gfg^^^ 
prices than smaller concerns are forced to pay, because it buys 



510 



BIG BUSINESS AND SOCIAL UNREST 



them in enormous quantities. The trust can also save money 
in selHng its products, because a few bookkeepers and travehng 
salesmen can do the work which required many men when the 
companies which united to form the big business were com- 
peting with one another. Much material which goes to waste 
in the smaller business is made into valuable bi-products in the 
larger. The great meat-packing houses, for example, make 
a considerable part of their profits from the soap, fertilizer, 
buttons, mattresses, and other useful articles made from the 
blood, bones, hoofs, horns, and hair of the animals killed in 
their slaughter houses. 

On the other hand, the coming of big business was attended 
and followed by some very serious evils. Frequently the organ- 
The evils of izers of the trusts acted ver}^ unjustly toward the companies 
trusts which did not want to join them. Of course, the chief purpose 

in combining all or nearly all the producers of an article into a 
trust was to control the production and the price of that article. 
When a trust is able to control all or nearly all the business in 
its line it is said to have a monopoly. If a trust has a monopoly 
of some needful article it can charge an unfair price for it and 
in this way make great profits at the expense of the helpless 
consumer. The trusts made enormous fortunes for their 
owners, and many people came to believe that these fortunes 
were won by tricky and dishonest means. It was also com- 
monly believed that some of the trusts resorted to bribery and 
other corrupt political practices in order to control public 
officers and to secure laws giving special favors to big business. 
Because of these beliefs men soon began to say that big business 
combinations ought to be broken up or at least to be firmly 
controlled and regulated by the government. 

The Organization of Labor. — The growth of big business 
tended to develop two distinct classes of people in our country, 
the men who own the capital invested in mines, factories, and 
railroads, and the laborers whom the}^ employ. In the earlier 
days, when business was carried on in a small way, the employer 
often worked with his men, as he still does on farms and in 
small shops. Under such conditions it was easy for the em- 
ployer and his employees to be friends and to settle quickly and 
easily any differences that might arise between them. But when 
countless toilers in great factories took the places of the little 



The unrest 
of labor 



THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR 511 

groups of workers in the small shops and mills of earlier days, 
the old kindly relation between the employer and his workmen 
began to pass away. With the coming of big business the 
employer and his employees became strangers to each other, 
and soon suspicion and distrust crept in between them. When ' 
the workingmen saw the vast fortunes which the trust builders 
were piling up, they began to feel that they were not getting a 
just share of the wealth which their toil did so much to produce. 
This feeling has led to a long series of disputes between capital 
and labor, which have continued to our own time. 

At first the individual workingman could do little to defend 
his interests. If he Avorked at all he must accept such hours of 
labor and such wages as his employer offered. But the workers The rise of 
soon came to see that in union there is strength. Early in the labor unions 
nineteenth century, men working at the same trade or in the 
same factory began to form local trade unions. Later, local 
unions of men in the same trade began to unite in national 
unions. The printers formed the first national trade union in 
1850, and l)y the close of the Civil War, the carpenters, the cigar 
makers, the locomotive engineers, and many other trades 
had formed national organizations. 

When the great business combinations which we call the 
trusts began to appear, efforts were made to unite the working- 
men in all lines of industry into one great organization powerful The 
enough to force respect for the rights of labor. The first society American 
of this nature was started in Philadelphia in 1869. For a time of Labor 
it grew slowly, but by 1886 it had developed into a great order, 
called the Knights of Labor, with nearly a million members, 
A little later the American Federation of Lal)or, an organization 
which joins in one body all the national trade unions of the 
country, began to take the place of the Knights of Labor, and 
for the last twenty years the Federation has been the most 
influential body of organized workingmen in America. 

It is the aim of the trade unions to secure higher wages for 
their members, to shorten their hours of labor, and to improve 
the conditions under which they work and live. Sometimes Labor unions 
they do this by collective bargaining with the employer. Some- ^^^^ helped 
times, when this method fails, the members of the union strike ; 
that is, they refuse to work until their employer grants their 
demands. There have been many strikes, large and small, 



512 



BIG BUSINESS AND SOCIAL UNREST 



in our country during the last fifty years, and among them the 
great railroad strikes of 1877, of 1886, and of 1894 were espe- 
cially notable and far reaching in their influence. All these 
railroad strikes, as well as many others in the mines and fac- 
tories of the country, have been attended with lawlessness and 
violence. Disorder, rioting, the destruction of property, and 
loss of life have been common in conflicts between the strikers 
and the police. In spite of all this strife, however, the labor 
unions have steadily improved th(^ condition of the workers. 
One hundred years ago the hours of toil were from sunrise to 



l^^nr^ 












A Scene in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 

sunset. Now the average length of the working day in America 
is about nine hours, and in many lines of work an eight-hour 
day prevails. Wages are higher than ever before, and the 
conditions under which men and women work in shops and 
factories have steadily improved. The workers of the country 
have won these important gains ])y standing by each other in 
their various labor organizations. 

The Tariff Question. — We have already studied the origin 
Differing ^nd early history of the protective tariff in our country. During 
about °a high *^^^ Civil War the duties on imports were made higher than 
tariff ever, partly in order to raise more revenue to pay the 



THE TARIFF QUESTION 



513 



growing expenses of the government, and partly to counter- 
balance the high taxes levied on our own manufactures. After 
the Civil War was over, the high taxes on domestic manufac- 
tures were removed, but the high war tariff was continued, 
partly because the money which it brought into the treasury 
was needed to pay the national debt, and partly because many 
people believed that a high tariff helped the farmers and manu- 
facturers to get better prices for their products, and to pay 
higher wages to their 
workmen. As time 
passed, an increasing 
number of our people 
began to think that the 
high duties were unnec- 
essary and unjust, and 
some men said that the 
tariff helped to promote 
the upbuilding of the 
trusts. But as the Re- 
publican party, which 
favored high protection, 
was in power for twenty 
years after 1865, very 
few changes were made 
in the tariff" during that 
period. 

When G rover Cleve- 
land became president 
in 1885, the tariff was 
pi'oducing a great deal 
mor(! revenue than was needed to pay the necessary expenses ^^'^ ^ ® 
of the government. As a consequence, a surplus of many mil- 
lions of dollars was piling up in the treasury every year. This 
money could not well be used at that time to pay off more of 
the national debt, because most of the bonds of the government 
were not yet due, and their owners would not give them up 
unless they were paid more than their face value for them. 
Some people wanted to spend the surplus in improving the 
rivers and harbors of the country and in paying larger pensions 
to the old soldiers, but President Cleveland said that the only 
33 




Grover Cleveland 



President 
Cleveland 



514 



BIG BUSINESS AND SOCIAL UNREST 



The 

McKinley 
Tariff Act 



The Wilson 
Tariff Act 



Complaints 
against the 
railroads 



sensible thing to do was to reduce tlu^ tariff and thus reheve the 
people of a part of the heavy taxes they were paying. The 
president urged his views upon Congress so strongly that, in 
1888, the Democratic House of Representatives passed a bill 
lowering the tariff, but the Senate, which was controlled by the 
Republicans, refused to consider it. 

President ('leveland's bold action in insisting upon tariff 
reform made that question the main issue in the election of 
1888. Cleveland was defeated in this ele(;tion, as we have seen, 
and in 1890 the victorious Republicans passed the McKinley 
Act which gav<> the country the highest tariff it had ever known. 
The McKinley Act, lik(^ all tlie other tariff" laws in recent years, 
takes its name from the man who was chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Ways and Means in the House of Representatives 
which considered it. One interesting feature of the IVIcKinley 
tariff law was a provision for admitting the goods of other coun- 
tries into our ports free of duty, or at lower rates of duty, if 
those countries would extend similar favors to goods coming 
to them from the United States. Such an arrangement is 
called reciprocity. The reciprocity feature of the tariff of 1890 
was especially intended to build up our trade with the South 
American countries. 

When Cleveland became president a second time, in 1893, 
he continued to urge Congress to reduce the tariff', and as the 
Democrats then had a majority in both branches of that body, 
they passed the Wilson Tariff Act in 1894. This measure had 
so little tariff reform in it, however, that the president said his 
party had failed to keep its promise. Cleveland would not sign 
the Wilson bill, but he permitted it to become a law without 
his signatui'e. Neither side was yet satisfied with the tariff, 
and, as we shall see, that question has been a bone of contention 
between th(^ Republicans and the Democrats down to the present 
time. 

The Railroad Problem. — The new raih'oads which were 
built so I'apidly duiing the years just after th(^ Civil War played 
a large part in promoting the marvelous growth of the industries 
of the country at that time. At first, this improvement in trans- 
portation was welcomed with joy, but soon after 1870 grave 
complaints began to be heard that the railroad companies were 
treating the people very unfairly. It was said that the railroads 



THE RAILROAD PROBLEM 



515 




The western 
farmers at 
the mercy 
of the 
railroads 



frequently charged higher freight rates for a short distance 
than they (hd for a niuch longer haul over the same route. 
Even more serious was the complaint that freight rates were 
not the same for everybody. It was charged that the great 
corporations and trusts which siiipped their products in large 
quantities were getting lowei- rat(>s than tlu^ smaller manu- 
facturers, and that this unjust disci'imination tended to drive 
the latter out of business and thus to strc^ngthen the grip of 
the trusts upon th(^ country. 

The growing indignation against the railroads was espe- 
cially sti'ong among the farniei's of the prairi(^ states of the West. 
The people of that section of the coimtry were peculiarly de- 
pendent upon the lail- 
roads for nearly every- 
thing they had. The 
lumber of which they 
built their houses, the 
tools with which th(\\' 
cultivated thc^ soil, and 
nearly all the householc 1 
supplies they needed 
had to be brought to 
them long distances l)y 
rail. The wheat, corn, 
hogs, and cattle they 
grew upon their farms 
had little value unless they could ship them to market, in the 
seventies and eighties the western farmers were rapidly coming 
to believe that the railroads were making it impossible for them 
to prosper, Ijy chaiging excessive freight rates upon everything 
they bought and sold. 

When the people came to feel that railroad practices were 
unfair, and that railroad rates were often excessively high, they 
began to demand tlie passage of laws to correct these abuses. The demand 
In the early seventies such laws were enacted by several of the ^^^ federal 
western states. But it was soon found that this did not help raHroads^ 
matters very much, because most of the railroads were engaged 
in doing business in several states while the laws of any one 
state had no effect outside of its borders. The Constitution of 
the United States gives Congress the power to regulate com- 



Q K.'l.ston 1 -Mr I 

Cultivating Rice 



Mi, Kir, II,' 



516 



BIG BUSINESS AND SOCIAL UNREST 



The 

Interstate 
Commerce 
Act 



This law fails 
to stop rail- 
road abuses 



The 

Sherman 
Anti-Trust 
Act 



Attention is 
diverted to 
the silver 
question 



merce "among the several states," and when it was seen that 
state laws were inadequate to correct railroad abuses the people 
began to clamor for the regulation of the railroads by the 
national government. 

The First Attempts to Control Big Business. — By 1887 the 
demand that the United States government should try to stop 
railroad abuses had become so insistent that Congress passed 
the Interstate Commerce Act. This famous law required the 
railroads to print and make public their freight and passenger 
rates, and declared that these rates must not be excessive and 
that they must be the same for every one. It also provided for 
the appointment of an Interstate Commerce Commission of 
five members to investigate the rates charged by the railroads 
and to say when they were unreasonable. 

At first the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission 
were so limited that it could do little to cure the gross abuses 
in railroad management. While the commission could declare 
that freight rates were too high, it had no power to fix fairer 
prices. The railroads pretended to give the same rates to all, 
but they continued to favor the trusts and other big shippers 
by giving them rebates and by breaking the spirit of the law in 
other ways. They were also continually interfering in politics 
in order to secure special favors from the state legislatures and 
from the courts. As a consequence of these evil practices the 
wrath of the people waxed hotter against the railroads every 
year. 

In 1890 Congress took the first step against the trusts by 
passing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which forbade all combina- 
tions in restraint of trade between the -states or with foreign 
nations. The hope of the people that this law wt)uld check the 
growth of trusts was doomed to disappointment. For some years 
no effort was made by the national government to enforce the 
anti-trust act, and big business continvied to do very much as 
it pleased until after the dawn of the twentieth century. 

The Campaign for Free Silver. — The social unrest caused 
by the unfair practices and the exactions of the railroads and 
by the growing power of the trusts was becoming so intense 
in the years just after 1890 that many of our people were ready 
to imite in an eflbrt to regulate and control the big business 
interests of the country for the common good. This feeling 



THE CAMPAIGN FOR FREE SILVER 517 

was especially strong in the labor iniions and among the fanners 
of the West and the South. liut unfortunately the attention of 
the people was diverted just at this time from the needed 
reforms in our industrial lif(^ and fixed upon a demand for the 
free coinage of silver. In order to understand the silver ques- 
tion, which played a very important part in our politics during 
the last ten years of the nineteenth century, we must trace the 
history of our coinage from its beginning. 

In 1792 Congress provided for the free coinage of both gold 
and silver. This meant that anyone might take either gold or 
silver to the mint and have it coined into money. As gold is Free coinage 
more valuable than silver, Congress made the silver dollar ^t. ^^^^ ^^^ 
fifteen times as heavy as the gold in order that each, of them 
might have exactly the same value. If the gold dollar and the 
silver dollar are worth exactly the same, it will make no difference 
to anyone which he uses, and both kinds of coin will circulate 
freely. But gold and silver are constantly changing in value. 
The value of each of them, like the value of nearly everything 
else, depends mainly upon the demand for it and upon whether 
it is scarce or abundant. , If the metal in one of the dollars 
becomes more valuable than that in the other, the people will 
naturally make their purchases and pay their debts with the 
cheaper and keep the better dollar or use the metal in it for 
other purposes. For this reason the cheaper dollar will soon 
drive the dearer dollar out of use. 

Soon after the first coinage law was passed, it was found 
that the silver dollar, which was fifteen times as heavy as the 
gold dollar, was the cheaper dollar of the two, and consequently How one 
Httle else than silver was coined for many years. In an effort ^^^^\^^°^^ . 
to bring both metals into use as money, Congress voted in of use 
1834 to make the silver dollar sixteen times as heavy as the gold 
dollar, and for a while after this law was passed, both gold and 
silver were coined. But after the discovery of gold in California 
in 1848, the yellow metal grew so abundant that it soon became 
cheaper than silver at the coinage ratio of sixteen to one. When 
this happened no more silver was sent to the mint and the silver 
coins steadily disappeared. 

In 1873 Congress passed a new coinage law. As silver 
dollars had then been practically unknown for twenty years, 
the act of 1873 made no provision for their coinage in the future. 



518 



BIG BUSINESS AND SOCIAL UNREST 



coinage of 
silver 



The demand Hardly had this law been passed, however, when rich mines 
for the free ^^f silver began to be worked in the mountain states of the West. 
The flood of silvcn- which these new mines poured upon the 
market quickly made silver cheaper than gold at the old coinage 
ratio of sixteen to one. But this cheap silver could not be 
coined into money b(H'ause the door's of the mint had been closed 
against it by the law of 1873. The silver mine owners and many 
other men who wanted cheaper dollars with which to pay their 
debts at once began to clamor loudly for the restoration of 
the free coinage of silver at the old ratio of sixteen to one. 



The Bland- 
Allison Act 




C'ndtnci/ud A Underuood, y . Y. 
United States Treasury Building, Washington, D. C. 

In response to this demand, Congress passed the Bland- 
Allison Act in 1878. This law required the government to buy 
not less than two million doUais' worth, and not more than 
four rnillion dollars' worth of silver every month and to coin 
it into dollars. This was not fi'ee coinage of silver, but the silver 
men had to be content with it for a time. The Bland-Allison 
act was in force for twc^lve j'cars, and several hundred million 
silver dollars were coined urrder it. If you will look at the date 
upon the next silver dollar you see, you will be likely to find 
that it is some year between 1878 and 1890. 



THE CAMPAIGN FOR FREE SILVER 



519 



In order to plc^ase the silver mining states and to satisfy 
the peopU> of the South and West who thouglit that the country 
needed more money, Congress passed the Sherman Silver Pur- 
chase Act in 1890. This law, which took the place of the Bland- 
Allison Act, required the secretary of the trea.sury to buy 
four and one-half million ounces of silver every month. This 
was nearly twice as much silver as the government had been 
purchasing under the Bland-Allison Act. But instead of coining 
all this silver it was stored in the treasvuy, and paid for with 
new treasury notes, that is, with new paper money. 

Any paper money is 
just as good as gold as long 
as the people know that 
they can get gold coin for it 
on demand. But by the 
time Grover Cleveland be- 
gan his second term as 
president, in 1893, so much 
new paper money had been 
issued to pay for the monthly 
purchases of silver that 
people began to wonder 
whether the government 
could continue to redeem 
all its notes in gold, and to 
think that possibly it might 
have to pay them in silver 
dollars which were then 
much less valuable than gold dollars. By borrowing large 
amounts of gold. President Cleveland managed to keep enough 
of it on hand to make every dollar of our paper money just 
as good as gold, and in 1894 he persuaded Congress to stop 
the purchase of any more silver by repealing the Sherman Silver 
Purchase Act. 

The repeal of this law increased the jjopular discontent. 
The friends of silver complained that there was not enough 
money in the country to carry on its business and that, as a 
consequence, prices were low and debts were hard to pay. On 
the other hand, many of the people feared that if silver dollars, 
in which the silver was worth only about half as much as the 



The 

Sherman 

Silver 

Purchase 

Act 




Cleveland's 

financial 

measures 



Harris & Ewing, Washinyton, D. C. 
William J. Bryan 



The silver 
question 
becomes the 
leading issue 



520 BIG BUSINESS^ AND SOCIAL UNREST 

gold in the gold dollars, were freely coined, they would drive 
the gold out of use, and that debts and wages would be paid 
in cheap monej'. The social unrest was further aggravated 
by the hard times which followed a disastrous financial panic 
in 1893. As time passed, it became clear that the silver question 
would be the leading issue in the next presidential election. 
Both of the great political parties were divided upon this ques- 
tion, but many more Democrats than Republicans favored the 
free coinage of both metals as it had existed before 1873. 

In 1896 the Republicans opposed the free coinage of silver 
and declared that all our silver and paper money must be kept 
The free as good as gold. Upon this platform they nominated William 
silver cam- IMcKinley of Ohio for the presidency. The Democrats de- 
paign of 1896 j^^g^j^^g^j ^j^g fj.gg coinage of both silver and gold at the ratio 
of sixteen to one, and made William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska 
their candidate. Th(^ Populists, a strong third party which had 
recently sprung up in the South and West, also favored the free 
coinage of silver and supported Bryan. The campaign of 1896 
was one of the most earnest and closely contested political 
battles in our history. Bryan, a young, enthusiastic, and 
eloquent man, visited every part of the country and spoke to 
millions of people. The big business interests favored McKinley 
and gave large sums of money to his campaign fund. Many 
Republicans in the western states deserted their party and 
voted for Bryan, but their loss was more than made good by 
the votes of eastern Democrats who supported McKinley. 
The Republicans won the election, and the campaign for the 
free coinage of silver was lost. 

The Triumph of Big Business. — William McKinley came 
to the pr(^sidency in 1897 after a long career in the public service. 
William When a young man he had been a brave soldier in the Civil 

McKinley "W'ar. Some years after the war he was elected to the House of 
Representatives, in which he rose to be a leader, and at the time 
of his election to the presidency he was just finishing a second 
term as the governor of Ohio. President McKinley was one of the 
most genial and lovable men who ever lived in the White House, 
but he believed that the prosperity of all the people depended 
upon the success of the big business concerns of the country. 
Accordingly^ he favored big business and did nothing to make 
the railroads and the trusts respect the rights of the people. 



THE TRIUMPH OFJ BIG BUSINESS 



521 



history 



The Republicans have always favored the protection of our 
industries by high duti(\s on imported goods, and one of Presi- 
dent McKinley's first acts was to call Congress in special session The highest 
to revise the tariff. The result was the passage of the Dingley J.^^^^,jj^ °"^ 
bill, the highest tariff act in our history. The Dingley tariff 
was in force for twelve years, and the Payne-Aldrich tariff which 
took its place in 1909 only slightly changed the rates of duty. 
The believers in high tariff claimed that these laws gave the man- 
ufacturers large profits and thus made it possible for them to 
pay high wages to their workmen. The foes of protection, on 
the other hand, declared 
that such high tariff laws 
made all the people pay 
more for the necessities of 
life and helped to tighten 
the grip of the trusts upon 
the business of the country. 

The year that McKin- 
ley became president the 
country was excited by the 
news that gold had been 
found in large quantities in 
the Klondike region in Can- 
ada near the Alaskan border. 
The next year another new 
gold field was discovered at 
Cape Nome in western 
Alaska. Many people 
rushed to these far northern 
regions, as the}" had hurried 
to California in 1849, and 

during the next few years a large addition was made to 
the supply of gold. This fact robbed the advocates of the 
free coinage of silver of their best argument, namely, that there 
was not enough gold in the country to provide a basis for a good 
system of money, and when Bryan ran for the presidency 
against McKinley a second time in 1900, he was easily defeated. 
The same year Congress passed a law making the gold dollar 
our standard coin and providing that all other forms of money 
shall be kept as good as gold. Of course, this can only be done 
by paying gold for them on demand. 




The gold 
standard 
permanently 
established 



Courtesy F. Gutekunst Co., Phila. 
William McKinley 



522 BIG BUSINESS AND SOCIAL UNREST 

President McKinley's administration was a time of rapid 
development in every line of industry. Our farmers were raising 
The growth great crops of wheat and cotton, our railroads were prosper- 
of the trusts ,jj^g^ g^j^^ q^j. manufacturers were seeking foreign markets for 
their surplus goods. With the govermiient of the nation in 
the hands of their friends, the trusts grew and multiplied. 
When the twentieth century opened, such important industries 
as the making of steel, the refining of sugar, and the manufac- 
ture of paper were in the hands of trusts, and many new trusts 
wen^ being formed with the purpose of controlling every im- 
portant lino of manufacturing in the country. There was gr(>at 
social unrc^st because of this condition, but the government was 
making no effort to enforce the law against the trusts and no 
one seemed to know what to do about it. 

REFERENCES 

Bassett, A Short History of the United States; Paxson, The New 
Nation; Andrews, The United States in Our Time; Sparks, National 
Development; Dewey, National Problems; Bogart, Ecmiomic History of 
the United States; Coman, Industrial History of the United States. 

TOPICAL READNGS. 

1. The Election of Garfield. Sparks, National Development, 165-181. 

2. "Blaine of Maine." Andrews, The United States in Our Oum 
Time, 452-480. 

3. The Growth of Our Inland Commerce. Sparks, National Develop- 
ment, 305-326. 

4. The Formation of the Trusts. Dewey, National Problems, 188-202. 

5. Organized Labor. Dewey, National Problems, 40-56. 

6. The Great Strike of 1894. Andrews, The United States in Our 
Oum Time, 722-730. 

7. Cleveland and Tariff Reform. Dewey, National Problems, bl-l^. 

8. The Wilson Tariff Act. Dewey, National Problems, 279-286. 

9. The Populist Party. Dewey, National Problems, 244-246. 

10. Bryan and McKinley. Andrews, The United States in Our Own 
Time, 77'S-7S7. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Novels: Ho wells. The Rise of Silas Lapham; Wilkins, The Portion 
of Labor; White, A Certain Rich Man; Norris, The Octopus; The Pit; 
Churchill, A Far Country; Sinclair, The Jungle; Richardson, The Lon(i 
Day; Kemp, Boss Tom. 



REFERENCES 523 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. In the long run, have the people gained or lost by the formation of 
the trusts? Give your reasons for your opinion. 

2. Can you find an example of a monopoly in your home conununity? 
If you owned all the butter in the country could you sell it for any price 
you pleased? Why? 

3. How many hours per day do the men work in the shops and factories 
in your neighborhood? How many hours per day do you think tliey ought 
to work? 

4. Who was Jay Gould? James J. Hill? Andrew Carnegie? J. 
Pierpont Morgan? Who is John D. Rockefeller? 

5. When the taxes bring m more money than is needed to pay the 
necessary expenses of the government what ought to be done? 

6. Ask the men you know what their reasons are for favoring or 
opposing a protective tariff. 

'7. Is it wrong for the man who ships a hundred carloads of goods to 
get a lower freight rate than the man who ships only one carload? Why? 
Is it right to sell potatoes at a lower price per bushel to the man who takes 
one hundred bushels than to the man who buys only one bushel? Why? 

8. Just what is meant by sixteen to one? Was Bryan light or wrong 
in advocating the free coinage of silv(;r? Why? 



CHAPTER XXVII 



New Social Ideals and Recent Progress 

Our Latest Presidents. — About six months after beginning 

his second term, President McKinley was shot by an anarchist 

The death of while he was shaking hands with the people at the Pan-American 

McKinley Exposition in Buffalo. At first the people hoped that the 

wounded president might recover, but this hope proved vain, 

and in a few days he 
died. For the fifth time 
in our history a vice- 
president succeeded to 
the presidency. 

Theodore Roosevelt 
was already justly fam- 
ous as an upright and 
courageous public ser- 
vant when JVIcKinley's 
death made him presi- 
dent in September, 
1901. Since early man- 
hood he had striven for 
purer politics and more 
efficient government. 
In 1900 Roosevelt was 
governor of New York, 
and the leaders of the 
Republican party in 
that state who did not likehiszealfor reform, managed to have 
him nominated for the vice-presidency in order to prevent his 
reelection as governor. They little dreamed that by this act 
they were making him the leader of the nation in its struggle for 
a square deal in business and for higher social ideals. The new 
president was a vigorous, bold, enthusiastic, and outspoken man 
of rare ability and the highest integrity. He was unselfish, ab- 
solutely fearless, and a born leader of men. No other Ameri- 
can since Abraham Lincoln has had so great an influence for 
good upon the thought and the life of our people. 

524 




Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. 
Theodore Roosevelt 



OUR LATEST PRESIDENTS 



525 



The 

election of 
Taft 



The tinic was ripo for such a leader as President Roosevelt. 
He felt the growing; unrest among the people, and he knew that 
his countrjaiien would not permit the railroads and the trusts The policy of 
to rule them forever. He believed that the right way to avoid the ''square 
trouble in future was to enforce all the existing laws regulat- 
ing big business, to make new laws for its further control in 
the interest of all the people, and to give to rich and poor 
alike what he called a "square deal." While this policy won 
for Roosevelt the bitter hatred of the trust magnates and of 
the self-seeking politicians 
who served them, it made 
him very popular with the 
people, and in 1904 he was 
elected to the presidency 
by an overwhelming major- 
ity over Alton. B. Parker, 
the Democratic candidate. 
Roosevelt's second term 
was a continual struggle for 
the rights of the people 
against the big business 
interests of the country. 
Several trusts were prose- 
cuted for breaking the laws, 
and new laws were passed 
for the better regulation of 
the railroads. The confi- 
dence of the people in 
Roosevelt continued to grow, and in 1908 his influence led 
the Republicans to make his secretary of war, William H. Taft 
of Ohio, their candidate for the presidency. For a third time 
William Jennings Bryan was the defeated Democratic candidate. 

William H. Taft, our president from 1909 to 1913, was a 
wise and experienced statesman who shared some of the pro- 
gressive view^s and carried on most of the policies of his pre- The rise 
decessor. But Taft was an easy-going man who lackc^l the ^ t^® . 
fighting qualities of Roosevelt, and he soon fell under the movement 
influence of the old-fashioned or conservative Republicans who 
disliked Roosevelt and his reforms. These conservative 
Republicans or "standpatters," as they were called, planned 




Harris li- Ewing, Washinytoii, D. C. 
William H. Taft 



526 NEW SOCIAL IDEALS, RECENT PROGRESS 



to renominate Taft in 1912, but the progr-essive members of 
the party who wanted to carry still further the reform policies 
of Roosevelt refused to vote for Taft and tried to nominate 
Roosevelt for another term. After a close and bitter contest 
in the Republican national convention, Taft was nominated. 
The progressive Republicans declared that Tafl's nomination 
was made by unfair means and refused to support him. A little 
later they held another convention, organized the Progressive 

party, dc^manded a long list 
of pohtical and social re- 
forms, and named Roosevelt 
as their candidate for the 
joresidency. The result of 
this split in the Republican 
jiarty in 1912 was the elec- 
tion of Woodrow Wilson by 
the Democrats. 

Woodrow Wilson, who 
became president in 1913, 
was a famous teacher and 
author who had been presi- 
dent of Princeton University 
and more recently governor 
of New Jersey. He was 
a progressive and forward- 
looking man, and during his 
first term the power of the 
trusts and of the great 
financial combinations was 
further restricted. In 1916 
W^ilson was reelected over 
Charles E. Huglu^s, the candidate of the Republicans. The 
history of his se(!ond term is the story of the entrance of our 
country into the great war with Germany in 1917 and of the part 
which we took in Ininging that awful contest to a victorious end. 
New Ways in Politics and Government. — In an earlier 
chapter we saw how the spoils system tended to corrupt our 
The spoils political life. Yet for half a century after Andrew Jackson 
system introduced this bad practice into our national government, 
whenever the party in power was defeated in a presidential 



Woodrow 
Wilson 




© 11,1 



i,s' it- Ewing, Washington, D. C. 
Woodrow Wilson 



NEW WAYS IN POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 527 

election, all the appointive office-holders except the judges were 
turned out and their phu^es given to the politicians of the 
victorious party. About fifty y(^ars ago a few (^ainest men 
l)egan to urge a reform of the civil service, but at fii'st very 
little attention was paid to them. 

After President Garfield was shot l)y a disappointed office- 
seeker, the evils of the spoils system could no longer b(^ over- 
looked or denied, and in 1883 Congress passed the Civil Service^ Civil service 
Law. This act provided for the appointment of a Civil Service reform 
Commission of three men. It is the duty of this commission to 
give competitive examinations which must be taken by those 
who seek places in the civil service. When a public officer has 
been ajipointed after passing su(!h an examination he cannot 
be removed except for just cause anci then only after a fair 
hearing. The passage of the Civil Service Law marked the 
beginning of a change from the spoils system to a merit system. 
The president has the right to name the offices for which 
competitive examinations must be taken. At first the number 
of offices on this list was small, but the later presidents, espe- 
cially Cleveland, Roosevelt and Taft, have added others to it 
until now fully two-thirds of all the persons in the civil serv- 
ice had to pass examinations before they were appointed. 
Similar efforts have been made to introduce the merit system 
into the governments of some of our states and cities, but in 
many of them the evils of the spoils system are still very grave. 

The organization which manages each political party is 
sometimes called the party "machine," and the leaders of the 
"machine" are often called the "bosses" of the party. Lentil Political 
recent years candidates for office in our counties, congressional "machines" 
districts, and states were nominated by party conventions. The "bosses" 
members of these conventions wcn-e sujiposed to be elected by 
the voters of the respective parties, but as a matter of fact they 
were often chosen through the influence of the party "bosses" 
and they usually voted as the "bosses" directed. By paying 
the campaign expenses of the party "machines", and sometimes 
by bribing the "bosses", the corporations and trusts which 
were trying to get the business of the country into their hands 
often managed to have men selected for office who would do 
their bidding. About twenty years ago some of the western 
states began to try to destroy the influence of the "bosses" 



528 NEW SOCIAL IDEALS, RECENT PROGRESS 



Direct 
primaries 



Initiative and 
referendum 



The 

seventeenth 

amendment 



Woman 
suffrage 



and of the political rings by providing for the nomination of 
candidates for office at party elections called direct primaries. 
The change from party nominating conventions to direct pri- 
maries has spread from state to state until now nominations 
for office in nearly all our states are made in this way. 

When they noted the growing influence upon the govern- 
ment of the country of the big business interests and their 
creatures, the political" bosses/'many of the people began to feel 
that their state legislatures no longer truly represented them. 
As a result of this feeling, some of the western states, whose 
people are less afraid than those of the East to try a thing 
merely because it is new, sought to protect the lawmaking 
power of the people by adopting two devices known as the 

initiative and the refer- 
^^ cndum. By the initi- 
ative a certain per 
cent, of the voters of a 
state may propose a 
law, or force the legis- 
lature to do so, and 
then submit it to the 
people for their approv- 
al or rejection. The 
referendum provides 
that when enough vot- 
ers demand it, an act 
passed by the legisla- 
ture must b(> approved ])y a popular vote before it becomes 
a law. The popular distrust of the influence of the moneyed 
interests jind of tlu^ political "l)osses" also helped to bring 
al)out the adoi:)tion of the seventeenth amendment to the Consti- 
tution in 1913. This amendment took away from the state legis- 
latures the right to elect United States senators, and provided 
for their choice by the direct vote of the people. 

Another movement to make the government more truly rep- 
resentative of all the people is the extension to women of the 
right tovote on equal terms with men. Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, 
and Idaho were the pioneers in adopting woman sufi"rage, and 
since 1910 women have had the right to vote in all the other far 
western states. In 1919 Congress proposed an amendment to the 




Courtesy of Georoe B. Post & Sons 
A Typical State Capital at Madison, Wisconsin 



NEW LAWS FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD 529 

Constitution giving women the right to vote on the same terms 
as men. This amenchnent was ratified by three-fourths of the 
states in 1920, and the women of the whole countiy voted for 
the first time in the presidential election of that year. 

The rapid growth of cities during the last fifty years has 
brought many new political problems in its train. The streets 
must be paved, lighted, and cleaned; policemen and firemen Refonns 
must be employed to guard the people and their property; an in city 
adequate supply of pure water must be provided ; and the health 6°^^""°®° 
and welfare of the inhabitants must be looked after in other 
ways. For a time, these things were very badly done in many 
of our cities. Political ''bosses" controlled the members of the 
councils and the other city officers, and bribery, graft, and cor- 
rupt politics ran riot. In their efforts to reform these shameful 
conditions, hundreds of our cities have adopted the "commis- 
sion plan" of government during the last dozen years. Under 
this plan the voters elect a small body of men, often five in 
number, and put the government of the city into their hands. 
Still more recently a few of our cities have adopted the "city 
manager plan" of govermnent, in which one man is put in 
charge of all the city's affairs and held responsible for the results. 

All the newer ways in politics and government named in 
this section are an improvement upon the older methods which 
they displaced, but they have fallen far short of ridding our intelligent 
country of the influence of political "bosses" and selfish busi- interest in 
ness interests. Our people are rapidly learning that they can ^^ 
have good government in a democracy only when all the 
voters take an intelligent interest in public affairs, and are 
willing to give a part of their time to seeing that honest and 
competent men are selected to manage the public Imsiness. 

New Laws for the Public Good. — By the dawn of the twen- 
tieth century the trusts and other great corporations employed 
vast numbers of our wage earners, and all our people depended Freedom 
upon these big business concerns for some of the necessities of in peril 
life. Under these circumstances it seemed to many of our 
citizens that their freedom was in grave peril. How, they said, 
can we be free when our labor and the prices we must pay for 
the means of life are controlled by the masters of big business? 
It is true that some men .denied that there was anything wrong Conserv- 
in this situation. Such men pointed to the business prosperity atives 



530 NEW SOCIAL IDEALS, RECENT PROGRESS 



Socialists 



of the country, claimed that all the people shared in it, and 
declared that it was best to let well enough alone. At the other 
extreme were those who thought that the way in which industry 
was carried on was all wrong, and that it must be revolutionized 
if we were not to become a nation of slaves ruled by the big busi- 
ness interests. Such men declared that the land, the mines, the 
railroads, the factories, and all the other means by which wealth 
is produced ought to belong to all the people and be operated 
by the government. Those who hold this view are called Social- 
ists. Their number grew so fast during the first decade of 
this century that they cast nearly a million votes in the election 
of 1912. But the majority of our people held neither of the 
views just described. They knew that the great railroad corn- 
Progressives panics and the trusts were guilty of evil practices, but they also 
believed that these big business concerns had grown up naturally 
in our country, and that if they were properly controlled and reg- 
ulated by law they would be of great service to the people. In 
other words, they did not think a business was bad just because it 
was big. This was the position of President Roosevelt, and under 
him and his successors, Taft and Wilson, many laws were passed 
to regulate and restrict big business for the public good. 

The business of the country is so dependent upon the 
railroads that it is vitally important that they should be 
managed in the interest of the public welfare. The Interstate 
Commerce Act of 1887 was intended to secure this end, but 
as we have seen, it was a weak law which the railroads easily 
evaded. When President Roosevelt tried to enforce this law 
he soon saw that new legislation was necessary before the 
railroads could be compelkni to deal justly with all the people. 
Through his influence and that of President Taft, the law 
regulating commerce between the states was greatly strength- 
ened by a series of acts passed between 1903 and 1910. These 
new laws enlarged the Interstate Commerce Commission from 
five to seven members and gave it jurisdiction over express 
companies, telegraph and telephone companies, and oil pipe 
lines, as well as railways. They also provided severe punish- 
ments for giving or accepting rebates, and gave the Interstate 
Commerce Commission the power to reduce railroad rates 
when they were too high and to permit them to be raised 
when an increase was shown to be just and necessary. 



Regulating 
the rail- 
roads 



NEW LAWS FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD 



531 



the law 



From the beginning of his administration, President Roose- 
velt told Congress that the control of the- trusts by the federal 
government was the most important business before the The trusts 
country. At first Congress paid little attention to his sugges- ^^^} °^®y 
tions, but in 1903 it created the Department of Commerce and 
Labor and authorized it to collect information about the 
conduct of corporations. You will recall that the Sherman 
Anti-Trust Act had been passed in 1890, but that it had never 
been vigorously enforced. As soon as President Roosevelt 
secvu'ed evidence that any trust was violating the Sherman 
act he brought suit against it in the United States courts, and 
the same policy was followed by President Taft. The most 
famous of these 
"trust busting'' 
cases, as they were 
called, was the 
prosecution of the 
Standard Oil Com- 
pany in 1907. After 
a long legal battle 
the Supreme Court 
decided in 19 11 that 
this famous trust 
must be dissolves! 
because it was vio- 
lating the law; but 
as a little group of 
ten or twelve men controlled nearly all the companies into which 
the great corporation was broken up, the people gained little 
by this decision. In 1914 Congress passed the Clayton Anti- 
Trust Bill, which further restricted the power of the trusts, but 
they have not yet been brought fully under public control. 

The Democrats have always favored lower duties than the 
Republicans, and soon after their leader, Woodrow Wilson, 
became president in 1913, he called Congress together in special The tariff 
session to revise the tariff. The result was the passage of the reduced 
Underwood Tariff Bill. This act, which is still in force, reduced 
the average of duties about one-third and admitted a number 
of the necessities of life free of duty altogether. It was hoped 
that this law, while providing moderate protection for our manu- 




The National City Bank of New York 
One of the largest financial institutions in the world. 



532 NEW SOCIAL IDEALS, RECENT PROGRESS 



Federal Re- 
serve Banks 



Many laws 
for the 
public 
welfare 



Wasteful- 
ness of our 
people 



factming industries, would insure cheaper goods for all the' 
people. 

Another very important law passed during the first year 
of President Wilson's administration was the Federal Reserve 
Bank Act. This act divided the country into twelve districts 
and established a Federal Reserve Bank in some important 
city in each district. Every national bank is a member of the 
Federal Reserve Bank of its district. The purpose of the 
Federal Reserve banking system is to prevent the undue con- 
centration of the money of the country in one great financial 
center like New York, and to provide for issuing new paper 
money whenever the business needs of the country require it. 
If you will examine the next pieces of paper money that you 
see, you will probably find that some of them are the notes of 
Federal Reserve banks. 

During the last fifteen years both the states and the 
United States have enacted a great many other laws intended 
to promote the welfare or safeguard the health of the people. 
The postal service has been extended by the creation of postal 
savings banks and by the establishment of a parcel post to 
carry packages of merchandise. A pure food and drugs act 
forbids the adulteration of these articles, and another law pro- 
vides for the federal inspection of all meat products in the in- 
terest of the public health. Ivabor has been safeguarded by laws 
to prevent young children from working in factories, and to limit 
the number of hours of labor on the railroads and in some 
other lines of work, and Ijy the establishment of a separate 
Department of Labor in 1913. Other laws enable farmers to 
borrow money of the government for a longer time and at a 
lower rate of interest than the banks will allow, and provide 
for the estal)lishinent of farm bureaus to promote instruction 
in agriculture and to advance the interests of the farmers in 
other ways. 

New Movements for Social Betterment. — While conquering 
the wilderness and building up the industries of the United 
States our people^ actcxl as if there were no limit to the resources 
of their country. Th(^y made vast desolate areas by destroying 
the forests in regions where the land is only fit to grow timber; 
they were wasteful in mining and using coal and the metals; 
and worst of all, they depleted the fertility of the soil by careless 



MOVEMENTS FOR SOCIAL BETTERMENT 533 



methods of fannino;. One of the greatest of President Roose- 
velt's many valuable services to his country during the event- 
ful years of his administration was in calling attention in his 
forceful way to this threatening waste of the bounties of nature 
and in inspiring a movement for their conservation for the future. 
The conservation of ihv natural resources of the country 
has various meanings. In the case of coal, oil, and gas, which 
when once used are gone forever, it means the elimination of 




movement 



An Oil Pool in Beaumont, Texas 

waste in their production and economy in their use. In the case The con- 

of the metals, which, like coal and oil, are limited in amount, servation 

but unlike them, can be used again and again until they are 

worn out, it means the reduction of waste in mining the ore 

and in extracting the metal from it, and then a careful use of 

the metal to make it last as long as possible. The use of water 

on the other hand does not destroy it, and so it is best conserved 

by using it as far as possible for navigation, for irrigation, and 

as a source of power. It also means that big corporations shall 

not be permitted to monopolize the water power of the country, 



534 NEW SOCIAL IDEALS, RECENT PROGRESS 

but that this important resource shall be kept in the hands of 
the people and managed in their interest. The soil and the 
forests, unlike fuels and metals, when exhausted or destroyed 
may be slowly renewed. The farmers can conserve the soil by 
handling it in such a way as to restore and preserve in it the 
elements which are necessary for plant food. Much waste 
land may also be made useful by the drainage of swamps and 
the irrigation of arid regions. The forests are conserved by not 
using lumber more freely than it can be grown. To secure this 
end young trees must be planted ; forest fires must be prevented 
or fought; and only such timber must be cut as is ripe for use. 
It has been found that the best way to conserve the forests 
is to keep them in the hands of the national government. In 
Forest 1891 Congress passed a law authorizing the president to reserve 
reserves forests lands for the use of the nation. Presidents Harrison, 
Cleveland, and McKinley began to establish forest reserves, and 
President Roosevelt reservcti the larger part of the great forests 
in the Pacific and Rocky Mountain states, which were still a 
part of the public lands, as national forests to be held forever 
as the property of the joeople and managed in their interest. 
We owe a great del)t of gratitude for oiu- sjilendid forest reserves 
to Theodore Roosevelt and to Gifford Pinchot who was chief 
forester of the United States from 1898 to 1910. 

The protection of the lives and health of the people is even 
more important than the conservation of the natural resources 
Safety first of the country. For a long time neither the nation nor the 
states paid much attention to these vital matters. Accidents 
were very common in factories, mines, and on the railroads. 
But in recent years many of the states have provided by law 
for the inspection of mines and factories to see that they are 
properly ventilated, and that dangerous machinery is so covered 
as to prevent injury to the workmen; and the United States 
has required all railroads which are engaged in interstate com- 
merce to safeguard their employees by using air brakes and 
automatic couplers on all their locomotives and cars. But in 
spite of all these laws there are still many accidents in industry, 
and many of the states have passed workmen's compensation 
acts under which the employer or the state pays an injured 
workman a part of his wages while he is recovering, or gives him 
a fixed sum or a pension if his injury permanently disables him. 



MOVEMENTS FOR SOCIAL BETTERMENT 535 

During the later 3'ears of our history, improvements in 
hygiene and sanitation, new discoveries in medicine and surgery, 
and better care of the sick have done much to conquer disease Health 
and to prolong life. Vaccination, where practised, has ban- measures 
ished smallpox; cleanliness has driven out cholera, a terrible 
disease of j^ears ago; antitoxin has conquered diphtheria; 
typhoid fever has practically disappeared in cities where the 
water is pure and proper sanitary regulations are observed; 
and the dreadful scourge of yellow fever is no longer known 




A Consolidated Country School 



The "Jackson" school in Jackson Township, Indiana, 
bring the pupils from ail parts of the township. 



Thirteen transportation vehicles 



where the mosquitoes by which it is transmitted from one 
person to another have been exterminated. All our cities and 
manjr of our smaller towns maintain excellent hospitals for 
the care of the sick, and ample provision is made in hospitals 
and schools for the treatment and education of the insane and 
the feeble-minded. 

The movement for the prohibition of the manufacture and 
sale of intoxicating licjuors has grown with amazing rapidity 
during the last few years. The national Prohibition party was The 
organized in 1872, and it has had a candidate for the prosi- ^^Jg^gn? 
dency in every election since that time. Though the ProliilM- 



536 NEW SOCIAL IDEALS, RECENT PROGRESS 



The 

eighteenth 

amendment 



Improve- 
ments in 
the common 
schools 



Develop- 
ment of 
high schools 



tion party has never received many votes, it has had a great 
influence in stirring up the people against the evils of strong 
drink. Soon after 1900 the sentiment for prohibition began 
to gain ground rapidly. Anti-saloon leagues were formed to 
educate the people in favor of the abolition of the drink traffic. 
Some of the states adopted local option laws by which counties 
or townships were allowed to decide by popular vote whether 
saloons should be permitted within their limits, and other states 
were made "dry" by state action. State-wide prohibition 
spread rapidly in the South and the West. In 1917 Congress 
proposed the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution for- 
bidding the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, or 
exportation of intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes, and 
early in 1919 this amendment was ratified by more than three- 
fourths of the states and thus became a part of the fundamental 
law of the land. * 

Progress in Education. — During the last half century of 
our history, marvelous improvements have been made in our 
schools of every grade and kind. The free common school 
system has been extended to every corner of the country. The 
schools in this system have been carefully graded, and just now 
the one room schools in the country are being consolidated into 
a smaller number of larger schools with better facilities for good 
school work. Better schoolhouses have been built ; the annual 
school term has been lengthened; new branches of study have 
been introduced.; the quality of the teaching has been very 
much improved; and in many of the states compulsory attend- 
ance laws compel all children between certain ages to go to 
school. 

But perhaps the most striking feature of recent educational 
progress in the United States has been the growth of our high 
schools. Half a century ago there were only a few small high 
schools in all the land. Now every city and town has one or 
more of these schools and nearly a million and a half young 
Americans attend them. Great numbers of our high schools 
are housed in splendid new buildings well equipped with labora- 
tories, libraries, shops, and workrooms. The old-time high- 
school course of study, which consisted chiefly of Latin, Greek, 
and Mathematics, has been enriched by the addition of the 
natural sciences, modern languages, history, social science, and 



PROGRESS IN EDUCATION 



537 




University Hall, University of Michigan 
One of our many fine state universities 



literature. Technical, commercial, and agricultural liigli schools 
in ever-increasing numbers give boys and girls a training for 
the work of life in their respective communities. It is now 
possible to get a better education in any good high school than 
could be obtained in most of our colleges one hundi'ed years ago. 

The development 
of American colleges 
and universities since 
the time of the Civil 
War has been almost 
as remarkable as the 
growth of our high 
schools. Old institu- 
tions, like Harvard or 
the University of Penn- 
sylvania, have grown 
from little colleges to 
great universities at- 
tended by thousands of 
students. Splendid new 
universities, like Johns Hopkins at Baltimore, the University 
of Chicago, and Leland Stanford in California, have been richly 
endowed by some of our wealthy men. Most important of all, 
the states of the Middle West and of the Far West have 
developed great state universities, like those of Michigan, 

Wisconsin, Kansas, and 
California. Many of our 
universities have enlarged 
their field of service to the 
people by offering extension 
and correspondence courses 
which students may take at 
their own homes. In the 
meantime provision has 
been made for professional 
training by the establishment of numerous normal schools, 
agricultural colleges, and schools for the study of law, medicine, 
and engineering. 

Nor have our people neglected to provide opportunities for 
further education for those whose regular school life is over. 




Boston Public Library 
One of the many libraries open to the public 



538 NEW SOCIAL IDEALS, RECENT PROGRESS 

Education Many of our cities and towns maintain night schools in which 
for life those who must toil during the day may be taught in the 
evening. In some places the schoolhouses are open in the 
evenings for social gatherings, concerts, and instructive lectures. 
Every year more parks and playgrounds are provided for the 
recreation of the people. Nearly every town has its public 
library, and our large cities maintain public museums and fine 
art galleries. In all these ways we are seeking to make the 




Mark Twain John Fiske 

Our great humorist and one of our foremost historians 

education of our people a matter, not merely for school days 
only, but for life. 

Achievements in Literature, Art, and Science. — The 
progress of our country during the later years of its history 
Our later has not been limited to the upbuilding of our industries and to 
l^fforc political, social, and educational reforms. Every year an 
increasing number of our people devote their lives to literature, 
science, and the arts. Newspapers and magazines are more 
numerous and more widely read than ever before, and hundreds 
of able writers in all branches of literature are pouring forth a 
constant stream of new books. Perhaps none of these later 



letters 



ACHIEVEMENTS IN LITERATURE, ETC. 539 

writers quite equal such men of letters as Emerson, Hawthorne, 
and Lowell. But Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and F. 
Marion Crawford are famous novelists; Walt Whitman and 
Sidney Lanier are poets of power, and James Wliitcomb Riley 
is popular and widely read; Samuel L. Clemens, better known 
as Mark Twain, is our greatest humorist; John Fiske, John 
Bach McMaster, and James Ford Rhodes are foremost among 
our later historians ; while Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wil- 
son are almost as well known as writers as they are as statesmen. 




Keijatone View Comjiany, ^leadville. Pa. 
The First Conquest of the Air 
The Wright brothers in one of their early flights at Dayton, Ohio 

Our recent achievements in the fine arts have been even 
more notable than our progress in literature. Among many 
brilliant American painters of the last fifty years, special men- The fine arts 
tion may be made of the great portrait painter, John S. Sargent, 
and of Edwin A. Abbey, whose pictures adorn the walls of the 
Boston Public Library and of the capitol of Pennsylvania at 
Harrisburg. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, whose noble statue of 
Abraham Lincoln stands at the entrance to Lincoln Park in 
Chicago, is perhaps first in a little group of great American 
sculptors. 

But since the time of the Civil War most Americans of 



540 NEW SOCIAL IDEALS, RECENT PROGRESS 

great ability have devoted their energies to business, or to 
invention, architecture, or engineering. The Wright brothers, 
who gave the world the aeroplane, will take their places in 
history side by side with Fulton and Stephenson. The archi- 
tects who planned our "skyscraper" buildings, our palatial 
hotels, and our splendid railroad stations, like the Pennsylvania 
Station in New York and the Union Station in Washington, are 
worthy to rank among our greatest artists. The engineers 
who deepened the channel at the mouth of the Mississippi, 
who constructed the railroads across the Rocky Mountains, 
who tunneled the Hudson and built the Brooklyn Bridge, and 
who dug the Panama Canal are among the greatest benefactors 
of our people. 



REFERENCES. 

Paxson, The New Nation; Bassett, A Short History of the United 
States; Muzzey, An American History; Dewey, National Problems; 
Latan6, America as a World Power; Ogg, National Progress; Andrews, 
The United States in Our Oum Time; Bogart, Economic History of the 
United States; Pattee, History of American Literature. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. The Evils of the Spoils System. Sparks, National Development, 
154-164. 

2. Civil Service Reform. Sparks, National Development, 182-201. 

3. Theodore Roosevelt and His Policies. Muzzey, An American 
History, 593-599. 

4. The Great Coal Strike of 1902. Latan^, Ainerica as a World 
Power, 310-313. 

5. The Reelection of Roosevelt. Latan6, America as a World 
Power, 224-241. 

6. The Regulation of the Railroads. Ogg, National Progress, 40-58. 

7. The Conservation x)f Our Resources. Ogg, National Progress, 
96-115. 

8. The Election of Taft. Ogg, National Progress, 1-18. 

9. The Administration of Taft. Bassett, A Short History of the 
United States, 837-843. 

10. The "Muck-Rakers." Paxson, The New Nation, 309-323. 

11. The Efforts to Purify Our Politics. Muzzey, An American History, 
610-618. 



REFERENCES 541 

12. The Rise of the Progressives. Paxson, The New Nation, 324-338. 

13. The Aims of the Socialists. Muzzey, An American History, 
618-620. 

14. Woodrow Wilson and His Policies. Muzzey, An American 
History, I-VIII. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Novels: Churchill, Conislon; Mr. Crewe's Career; Garland, The 
Forest Ranger. 

Art: Caffin, The Story of American Painting; American Masters of 
Sculpture. 

Biographies: Gilder, Graver Cleveland; Riis, Theodore Roosevelt; 
Lewis, Life of Theodore Roosevelt; Ford, Woodrow Wilson. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Does the spoils system exist in the government of your city, 
county, or state? Can the government always find the best man for a 
position by means of competitive examination? Why? 

2. Are candidates for office in your state nominated by direct 
primaries? Ask the voters you know if they think that this method of 
nomination is a good plan. 

3. Why are the people of the western states less afraid than those of 
the East to try new methods in government? What are the arguments for 
and against woman suffrage? What cities in your state have the commission 
or the city manager form of government? How are they pleased with it? 

4. What can be said in favor of socialism? What are the objections to 
it? 

5. In what ways does the business of the country depend upon the 
railroads? Why is it unwise to permit young children to work in factories? 
What is done in your home community to prevent accidents? 

6. What measures are taken by your local government to protect 
the health of the people? Can you suggest anything that ought to be done 
in your part of the country to conserve its natural resources? 

7. Was the adoption of the eighteenth amendment to the Consti- 
tution wise? Why? 

8. What improvements have been made in the schools of your district 
in the last twenty years? What further improvements ought to be made? 

9. What are ideals? What new social ideals are suggested in this 
chapter? 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

Americans in the Making 

The "Melting Pot." — The most important work going on 
in our (country throughout its history has been the making of 
The making Americans of the people who have been constantly coming 
of Americans fo its shores from the Old World. Since early colonial times 
men and women have been flocking to the New World from 
every land in Europe, and in our earlier history multitudes of 
Africans were brought here without their consent. A famous 
writer once called the United States a "melting pot" into which 
races from all lands were cast to be fused into one people. 
With the exception of Indians, all Americans have come out 
of this "melting pot," for we are all the descendants of immi- 
grants from the Old World. Some of us hav6 had ancestors 
in America for centuries; others belong to families which came 
only yesterday; but if we are true Americans we love and serve 
the United States before any other country. 

In one of the early chapters of this book we learned that 
many European peoples made contributions to the American 
"melting pot" in the old colonial days. The freedom-loving 
and home-making English sent the largest number; but the 
sturdy and enterprising Dutch and Swedes, the intelligent and 
upright French Huguenots, the plodding and thrifty Germans, 
and the hardy and aggressive Scotch-Irish, all helped in making 
the first Americans. Many Irish came to America just before 
the Revolution, and after that event the number of immigrants 
from the countries of western Europe grew slowly but steadily 
until it reached one hundred thousand in a single year for the 
first time in 1842. Since that date there have been only four 
years in which less than one hundred thousand foreigners 
entered our ports. W^e have already seen how the famine in 
Ireland in 1846 and the revolution in Germany in 1848 drove 
many of the sons of 'those countries to America during the next 
few years. 

The greater part of the Europeans who have come to 
America since its earliest settlement have been earnest and 

542 



THE "MELTING POT" 



543 



in the 
World 



New 



ambitious men and women who brought with them the best The influ- 
traits of character found in their home lands. Many of the ^^^^ °^ ^^^^ 
good quahties they brought have been improved, and some new 
ones developed by the experiences of life in the New World. 
The privations and hardships which the colonists and pioneers 
endured while they were conquering the wilderness weeded out 
the weak and inefficient, but made the survivors more hardy 
and persevering than 
ever. The invigorating 
climate of America, its 
greater freedom, and 
the wider opportunities 
to make the most of 
their lives which it has 
ever offered newcomers 
from the Old World 
have all played their 
part in changing Euro- 
pean immigrants into 
bold, energetic, and self- 
reliant Americans. 

Most important of 
all are the beliefs and 
the ideals which must 
find their way into the 
minds and the hearts of 
those who are cast into 
the "melting pot" be- 
fore they become true 
Americans. The gen- 
uine American believes 

that all men have equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness. By equality he does not mean equality in con- 
dition or in possessions but in privileges and opportunities. He 
holds that the people should choose their own rulers and that all 
just government depends upon the consent of the governed. To 
the American, freedom does not mean the right to do anything 
that he pleases, but rather a life governed by law, order, and fail* 
play between man and man. Every dweller in our country who 
cherishes these ideals and stands ready to work for them, to pay 




American 
ideals 



Publhlin-f;' Phnfn Strri, 
The Promised Land 
Immigrants from Europe catching their first glimpse 
of America, in which they see the statue of "Liberty 
Enlightening the World," in New York Harbor. 



544 



AMERICANS IN THE MAKING 



taxes for them, and if necessary to fight for them, is a real Amer- 
ican regardless of the land of his birth or the color of his skin. 

Our Later Immigrants. — The rapid growth of its popula- 
tion is one of the most striking facts in the history of our 
country. We have seen that the United States had thirty- 
one million inhabitants in 1860. Tliis number grew to thirty- 
nine millions in 1870, to fifty millions in 1880, and to sixty- 
two millions in 1890. The seventy-six million people with 
which we entered the twentieth century in 1900 had become 
ninety-two millions in 1910, and the census of 1920 shows a 
a population of more than one hundred and five millions in the 
United States. The population of our country is fully three 
times as great today as it was at the close of the Civil War. 

A great incoming tide of immigrants is largely responsible 
for this remarkable growth in population. Fully twenty-five 
million Europeans have sought their fortunes in America during 
the last half century. The flow of this incoming tide of foreign- 
ers has not always been uniform. When business has been 
prosperous and work has been plentiful it has risen rapidly. 
In periods of hard times it has fallen off somewhat, but always 
many have come. In 1873 nearly half a million newcomers 
entered our ports. The panic of that year caused a decline in 
immigration for some time, but by 1882 the yearly addition to 
our population from this source had climbed to eight hundred 
thousand and in 1905 it passed the million mark for the first 
time. At the present time at least one person in seven living 
in our country came here from a foreign land. 

Before 1885 the vast majority of the immigrants to our 
shores came from Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, and the 
Scandinavian countries. These were the lands from which the 
ancestors of most Americans had come in earlier days, and con- 
sequently the newcomers resembled the people alVeady here, in 
language, religious beliefs, habits, customs, and ways of thinking. 
Moreover, the Bi'itish, Irish, Germans, and Scandinavians came 
from lands which had progressive agriculture, thriving manu- 
factures, skilled labor, and a considerable measure of self- 
government. It was an easy task to make good Americans of 
such people. 

But about thirty-five years ago large numbers of people 
began to flock to America from the countries of southern and 



OUR LATER IMMIGRANTS 



545 



eastern Europe. In recent years more than three-fourths of our Immigrants 
immigrants have come from Italy, Austria-Hungary, Poland, ^^°™ south- 
and Russia. These newer immigrants differ widely from those Europe 
who came earlier, in race, language, religion, customs, and habits 
of thought. Much of their labor is unskilled; their standard 
of living is lower than ours; many of them cannot even read 
and write; and they have had little experience in governing 
themselves. While many of these later comers are hardy and 
industrious people who are helping to build up our country, the 




Showing Immigration to the United States Before and After 1885 

problem of Americanizing them is more difficult. Some of them 
have no intention of remaining permanently in our country, 
but hope to make their fortunes here and then return to spend 
their later years in ease and comfort in their home lands. 

The first settlers in America fled from political tyranny or 
religious persecution in their own countries, or came because 
they hoped to improve their condition in life in the New World. Why people 
The latest immigrants have sought our shores for very much ^^^^^ 
the same reasons. Many Germans and Italians have come to 
escape giving the best years of their lives to compulsory mili- 
35 



546 



AMERICANS IN THE MAKING 



tary service at home. Armenians and Syrians have fled 
from the tyranny of the Turkish government. Many Jews are 
in America Ijccause of the pers(^cution of their race in Russia. 
But probably the hope of making a better living in the United 
States than they have ever known at home has lured the 
greatest number. Wages are low m southern and eastern 
Europe, and when venturesome young men who have migrated 
to America from those lands have written home about earning 




sy of tile I'ord Motor Company. 
Americanizing the Alien 
An open-air class at a great manufacturing plant. 

as much money in a day as they had formerly earned in a week, 
it is little wonder that many of their relatives and friends have 
followed them to the land of promise. Then, too, the passage 
across the ocean could be made more quickly, cheaply, and 
safely than in earlier times, and the steamship companies have 
maintained agents in Europe who were constantly inciting and 
encouraging people to go to America. 

The task of Americanizing the great host of recent immi- 
grants would have been easier if they could have been scattered 
to all parts of the country, but most of them went quickly 



THE NEGROES IN OUR MIDST 547 

to the great centers of industry where they could most easily Where 
find eniplo^'ment. Years ago when the work of the South was newcomers 
done by slaves, free laborers naturally shunned that section, country 
and up to the present time comparatively few innnigrants have 
sought homes south of Mason and Dixon's line. IVlany of the 
Germans and Scandinavians who came in large numbers about 
forty years ago settled upon the land in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minne- 
sota, and the Dakotas, but only a f(nv of the Irish or of the later 
comers from the countries of southern and eastern Europe have 
become farmers in America. Vast numbers of these later 
immigrants and of their sons and daughters work in the factories 
of New England and New York, in the mines of Pennsylvania 
and of the Rocky Mountain states, in the steel mills of Pitts- 
burgh, in the packing houses of Chicago and Kansas City, and 
in repairing the railroads, digging the sewers, and doing the 
heavy labor in all sorts of construction work. More than 
one-half of the foreign born inhabitants of our country are in 
the five great manufacturing states of Massachusetts, New York, 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. 

The process of making Americans of our later immigrants 
is further hindered by the fact that they too often hcnxl together 
in communities of tlunr own in our manufacturing cities and Difficulties 
mining towns. In such communities they continue to use their |n American- 
own language, rarely come in close touch with real Americans, later comers 
and often live much as they did in their home lands. Too often 
the nature of their work tends to prevent them from becoming 
better men. When the eai'lier immigrant became a pioneer 
farmer he had to plan his own work and then do it alone or in 
cooperation with his neighbors. His daily life helped to make 
him an independent and self-reliant man. But most of the 
later immigrants who live in our great centers of industry, work 
under a boss and spend their lives in a monotonous round of 
daily toil which tends to make them mere cogs in a vast in- 
dustrial machine. 

The Negroes in Our Midst. — In addition to the horde of 
recent immigrants from southern and eastern Europe we have 
in the United States over ten million native American citizens The gulf of 
of African descent, many of whom are still very imperfectly difference 
fused in our great national "melting pot." The European 
pioneers who developed our country represented the most highly 



548 AMERICANS IN THE MAKING 

civilized races in the world, and they brought with them the 
best things in their home lands. The negro slaves who were 
brought to America in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies were barbarous pagans who had been captured or stolen 
by wicked slave-traders in the jungles of Africa. They were 
not only far beneath their masters in all civilized ways of living 
but they were divided from them also by a great gulf of race 
difference which to this day keeps white people and black people 
from living together upon a footing of perfect equality. 

Two centuries of slave hfe upon our southern plantations 
did much to lift the negroes out of their original barbarous 
The condition. It taught them to wear clothes, to live in houses, 

influence ^^^^ ^^ work in a lazy and inefficient way. It gave them the 
English language in the place of scores of African dialects, and 
it changed them, in name at least, from a pagan into a Christian 
race. On the other hand, the evils of slaver}^ were far greater 
than any benefits it conferred. It kept the negroes in ignorance 
and superstition and prevented the development in them of 
truthfulness, honesty, industry, and thrift, the fundamental 
virtues without which no race can travel very far along the road 
which leads to civilization. 

Over fifty years ago the Civil War gave the slaves their 
freedom, but a life of slavery had done little to fit the negroes 
The negro as to use this priceless gift. In an earlier chapter we have seen 
a freedman j~,q^ ^j^g freedmen fell under the influence of unscrupulous poli- 
ticians, what woes the resulting carpetbagger rule inflicted 
upon the South, and how the white men of that section at last 
overthrew it. Since that time the white people of the South 
have been steadfast in their determination to keep the political 
and social control of their communities in their own hands and 
to prevent by every means in their power the fusion of the 
white and the black races. 

But Booker T. Washington, the wisest and most influential 
leader that the negro race has ever had in America, insisted 
A great that his p(^ople could be good and loyal Americans without 

negro leader jj^ingjing in any social way with their white neighbors. "In 
aU things that are purely social," he told a white audience at 
Atlanta in 1895, "we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one 
as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." In the 
belief, as he said in the same speech, that "the opportunity to 



KEEPING OUT THE UNDESIRABLE 549 

earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more 
than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house," 
Booker T. Washington devoted his life to training negroes in 
industry in a great school which he built up at Tuskegee, 
Alabama. 

But the negroes who are getting an excellent training at 
Tuskegee, and in other schools like it, are only ii handful 
among the millions of their race in America. Still, some The race 
progress toward the day of better things for the black man is problem 
being made. Some negroes have acquired property and a fair 
measure of education, and many more, though still poor, are 
decent and hard-working men and women. But too many 
black men in our country are still ignorant, lazy, and thriftless. 
The task of training the members of this backward but brave, 
cheerful, and affectionate race for intelligent and useful 
American citizenship is one of the greatest problems that con- 
front our people at the present time. 

Keeping Out the Undesirable. — For a long time no effort 
was made to shut out any foreigner who wanted to come to 
the United States. Instead, laws were passed to encourage Our earlier 
immigration and to protect the newcomers upon their arrival, policy 
Most Americans felt, in the words of the poet Lowell, that their 
country had "room about its hearth for all mankind." We 
still welcome healthy, honest, industrious, and intelligent 
members of the white races; but when the great tide of immi- 
grants began to pour into our country forty or fifty years ago, 
we began to see that it brought many worthless and dangerous 
people who ought to be excluded. It was also felt that there 
ought to be some restriction upon the coming of the yellow 
races of Asia, whose members did not readily become like our 
people in their ideas, habits, and ways of living. 

The Chinese began coming to America soon after gold was 
discovered in California. They readily found employment on 
the Pacific Coast in building railroads and as gardeners and The 
house servants, and a few of them became laundrymen in exclusion 
other parts of the country. Because they were accustomed to laborers 
living upon a few cents a day, the Chinese worked for very 
low wages, and soon the white laboring men of California began 
to complain that the time was coming when they could no 
longer find work at living wages. As the Chinese continued 



550 



AMERICANS IN THE MAKING 



Our under- 
standing 
with Japan 



The restric- 
tion of 
European 
immigration 



The literacy 
test 



to come, many people in all parts of our country began to fear 
that some day we would have a Chinese problem as serious as 
our negro problem. For these reasons Congress passed a 
Chinese Exclusion act in 1882. This law, which has been 
renewed from time to time, excludes all Chinese laborers from 
the United States, but permits Chinese students, travelers, 
and merchants to enter. When the first law shutting out 
Chinese labor was passed, there were one hundred and thirty 
thousand Chinese in the United States, but at the present time 
there is only a little more than half that number. 

The Japanese began coming to a considerable extent to our 
country in the latter years of the nineteenth century. After 
1900 the number of them in our Pacific states grew rapidly. 
At first they were looked upon more kindly than the Chinese, 
but soon organized labor began to demand their exclusion on 
the ground that their presence reduced wages and tended to 
lower the standard of living. In 1906 San Francisco tried to 
keep the Japanese out of its public schools, and a little later 
California passed laws intended to prevent them from owning* 
land in that state. We now have an understanding with the 
government of Japan that it will not permit Japanese laborers 
to come to America, and since this arrangement was made very 
few Japanese have entered the United States. 

The same year that we began to exclude Chinese laborers. 
Congress passed an act to prevent the admission of undesirable 
persons from Europe, and several other laws with the same pur- 
pose have been passed at various times since 1882. It is the 
aim of these immigration laws to exclude from the United 
States all those who are physically, mentally, or morally unfit 
to mingle with our people. Accordingly, we shut out persons 
afflicted with tuberculosis or with any loathsome or contagious 
disease; paupers and persons likelj'- to become paupers; laborers 
who were under contract to work in America before they came 
here; all insane and feeble-minded p(n-sons; criminals; persons 
who intend to engage in immoral practices; and anarchists or 
those who want to destroy the government by violence. 

These restrictions upon immigration have kept out some 
undesirable and dangerous persons, but they have not much 
lessened the vast number of aliens who enter our gates every 
year. For a long time many of our people have believed in 



AMERICANIZING THE NEWCOMERS 



551 



shutting out all adults who cannot read, because this would 
exclude a large number of immigrants who belong to the more 
backward races of Pvuropc. Three times Congress has adopted 
this literacy test, as it is called, only to have its action vetoed 
successively by Presidents Cleveland, Taft, and Wilson, on the 
ground that it was not right, to close our doors to immigrants 
of good character and ability, simply because they had never 
had an opportunity to learn to read. But earlv in 1917 Congress 
succeeded in passing the literacy test over Pi-(\sident Wilson's 
veto, and since that time, with a few exceptions, no foreigner 




A Congested City Quarter 

over sixteen years of age has entered the United States unless 
he was able to read. This law will tend to reduce the number 
of inmiigrants from Italy, Hungary, Russia, and the Balkan 
States. 

Americanizing the Newcomers. — When we see the over- 
crowded quarters and unsanitary surroundings of the recent 
immigrants who throng the slums of our great cities, or the Difficulties 
sordid conditions in the midst of which many of them live in 
our mining districts, we may well wonder if it is possible to 
make good Americans of them in such unattractive and 
unhealtliful places. It is true that the task would be far easier 
if we should improve housing and living conditions in these 
places, as we ought, but even in the midst of the most un- 



552 



AMERICANS IN THE MAKING 



The 

influence of 
American 
life 



favorable surroundings many influences are at work changing 
the ahens who come to us into Americans in thought and life. 
The newcomer from a foreign land cannot walk our streets or 
go about his daily work without seeing American ways of living 
and feeling something of the American spirit and of American 
ideals. The moving picture theaters and other popular places 
of amusement give him some American ideas, and the public 
playgrounds help to bring his children and American children 
together. Even if the immigrant never learns the language of 
his adopted country his children are sure to speak English. 
The trade-unions of our country have played a very 




the trade 
unions 



E. E. Bac)i, Director of Aincricani-zntion, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 
Schoolroom for Foreign Children 
Teaching American customs and the English language to children of aliens. 

important part in leading the adult immigrants to desire 
The work of American ways of living and to strive after them. For example, 
the United Garment Workers, a large part of whose members 
in New York City are Jewish immigrants, succeeded in abol- 
ishing the sweatshop system in that city and managed to secure 
higher wages for its members and to shorten their working 
day. Likewise the United Mine Workers, ninety per cent of 
whose memliers are of foreign })irth, improved working con- 
ditions in the mines, i-educed the hours of labor, and greatly 
increased the wages of its members, thus helping many a 
poor immigrant to adopt an American standard of life. The 
trade-unions also bring the newcomers into touch with American 



REFERENCES 553 

workmen, urge them to become naturalized, and lead them to 
think and act as Americans. In his labor-union the new citizen 
learns to take an interest in public affairs, gains courage and 
self-confidence, develoj^s forc^sight, and is taught to ekn't and 
to obey his own officers. Hi^ thus learns the first principles of 
good citizenship in a self-governing country. 

But the public school is the most far-reaching and influential 
of all the agencies that are helping to make Americans. It 
begins by giving the children of the immigrants of every race a The public 
common language, the English speech of their new country, school makes 
It tends to remove any hostile feelings that may have existed 
between nationalities that formerly quarreled or clashed with 
one another in the Old World and to make all the children 
think of themselves as Americans. It teaches them the songs 
of American patriotism, the stories of American heroes, and the 
history of American institutions. It quickens and enlarges 
their minds, stimulates their ambitions, and inspires in them 
higher aspirations and nobler ideals. In all these ways our public 
schools are training a vast host of young Americans, native and 
foreign-born alike, for loyal and useful citizenship when they 
l^ecome men and women. 

REFERENCES. 

Ross, The Old Woi'ld in the New; Commons, Races and Immigrants 
in America; Jenks and Lauck, The Immigratd Problem; Steiner, The 
Immigrant Tide; Haworth, America hi Ferment; Washington, The 
Story of the Negro; Ogg, National Progress. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. What is an American? Henry Van Dyke, The Americanism of 
Washington, 16-20. 

2. The Original Make-np of the American People. Ross, The Old 
World in the New, 2-23. 

3. The Irish in America. Ross, The Old World in the New, 24-45. 

4. The German Element in Our Population. Ross, The Old World 
in the New, 46-66. 

5. The Scandinavians. Ross, The Old World in the New, 67-92. 

6. The Italians in America. Ross, The Old World in the New, 95-119. 

7. Our Slavic Immigrants. Ross, The Old World in the Netv, 120-140. 



554 AMERICANS IN THE MAKING 

8. A Black Boy's Struggle for an Education. Washington, Up 
from Slavery, 42-62. 

9. Booker T. Washington's Address at the Atlanta Exposition. 
Washington, Up from Slavery, 217-225. 

10. The Social Effects of Immigration. Ross, The Old World in the 
New, 228-25r3. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

The Experiences of Americans in the Making: Steiner, On the Trail 
of the Immigrant; Mary Antin, The Promised Land; Riis, The Making of 
an American; Ravage, An American in the Making; Washington, Up 
from Slavery; Dubois, The Soids of Black Folk. 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. In what ways does the physical geography of your home community 
influence the life of its people? What advantages had boys and girls in 
pioneer times that they do not have now? What advantages have you 
that the children of the pioneers did not .possess? Would you prefer to 
grow up in the city or in the country? Why? 

2. How many of the children in your school were not born in America? 
How many of them are native born but have parents who came from 
Europe? To what countries in Europe can you trace your own ancestry? 

3. What can white Americans do to help black Americans to become 
better citizens? In what ways can our negro citizens help themselves? 

4. What arguments can be advanced in favor of admitting Chinese 
and Japanese laborers to the United States? Do you favor the literacy 
test for all immigrants? Ought immigration to be restricted further? 
Why? 

5. In what ways can we help newcomers to our country in becoming 
good Americans? ' 



CHAPTER XXIX 



The United States and the World 



Our American Neighbors. — In his Farewell Address Wash- 
ington urged his countrymen to steer clear of all entangling 
relations with other nations, and for many years our people The Pan- 
were so absorbed in developing their own country that it was American 
easy for them to follow his advice. But as the nineteenth 




OCEAN 



Q. PINES v&'Ci«ifu<J.)auj3 ^-?. _f? «>.••*. 

^ W E S\3r^4ei^N-D I ,E S 
^^' .-<?-%^e&NTRAL / ^ y ^ ' L L E s 






PA C I F 1 C 



O C E A N 







3^--^.^- 






Cabello Caracas 






The Latin-American Lands about the Caribbean Sea 

century drew to a close, we began to cultivate closer relations 
with the Latin American countries south of us in the hope of 
increasing our trade with them. James G. Blaine was espe- 
cially interested in this policy, and when he was secretary of 
state in President Harrison's cabinet, a great Pan-American 
Congress, or meeting of delegates from all the countries of 
North and South America, was held in Washington in 1889. 
Since that time similar conferences to promote friendship 

555 



556 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD 

among the nations of the New World liave been held in the 
City of Mexico, in Kio Janeiro, and in Buenos Aires, and now 
these nations maintain a Bureau of American Republics at 
Washington to help the people of their respective countries to 
become better acquainted with each other and to encourage 
commerce among them. 

One hundred years ago the United States warned the 

nations of the Old World to keep their hands off the states of 

The Monroe North and South America. In all our later history we have 

Doctnne shown a steadfast determination to maintain the Monroe 




The Pan-American Union Building 
The international organization maintained by the twenty-one American Republics. 

Doctrine. When a dispute arose in 1895 over the location of 
the boundary line between British Guiana and Venezuela, and 
Great Britain refused President Cleveland's request to arbitrate 
the matter, Cleveland promptly sent a message to Congress 
declaring that the United States ought to investigate the 
question for itself, and that when it had determined what was 
the rightful boundary of Venezuela it ought to maintain that 
boundary by every means in its power. Great Britain yielded 
before this forceful stand and agreed to arbitrate her difference 
with Venezuela. In 1902 Great Britain and German}^ blockaded 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 557 

the Venezuelan ports to collect claims of theii- subjects against 
that country, and only the positive warning of President 
Roosevelt kept Germany from landing troops in \^enezuela. 
But by this time it was beginning to be seen that if we did 
not let European powers interfere with small American nations 
we must not permit the little American states to defraud their 
European creditors. Accordingly, when the little negro repubhc 
of Santo Domingo would not pay its debts we took charge of its 
financial affairs, and by an agreement with that island state 
we still manage them. In 1911 we made a similar financial 
arrangement with Nicaragua, and two years later that country 
practically put itself under the protection of the United States. 

As the American people and their Canadian neighbors 
speak the same language and are very much alike in their 
industrial, social, and political life, it is natural that the relations Friendly 
between them should be peculiarly intimate and friendly, ^^ji^'^^ada 
Neither fortresses nor soldiers guard then- conmion boundary 
line of more than three thousand miles. Many Canadians 
have migrated to the United States, and large numbers of 
American farmers have found new homes in the wheat-growing 
provinces of the Canadian Northwest. Differences over the 
right to fish off the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador, about 
the right to catch seals in Bering Sea, and over the boundary line 
l)etween Canada and Alaska have arisen from time to time 
between Canada and her mother country, Great Britain, on the 
one side and the United States on the other, but these matters 
have all been peaceably settled by impartial arbitration. 

The War with Spain. — We have seen how the Spaniards 
colonized the West Indies and conquered Mexico and a large 
part of South America during the fu'st half of the sixteenth The Cuban 
century. Early in the nineteenth century the Spanish colonies struggle for 
on the mainland won their independence, and the island prov- 
inces of Cuba and Porto Rico were all that Spain retained of 
her once vast empire in America. In 1868 the Cubans began 
to fight for their freedom, but after struggling for ten years 
they were forced to yield. By 1895, Spanish misgovernment 
in Cuba could be borne no longer, and a second revolt broke out 
in that island. In the war which followed, both sides were 
guilty of glaring outrages. The country was laid waste, and 
finally the Spanish captain-general required the inhabitants of 



558 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD 



with Spain 



Cuba to gather in the towns held by the Spanish troops where 
many of them starved to death. 

Our people sympathize with a struggle for liberty any- 
where in the world, and in this case their hearts were touched 
Causes of by the stories of Cuban suffering, and their anger was aroused 
our war \)y ^^g reports of Spanish cruelty. Then it was natural that 
Americans who had invested large sums of money in sugar 
plantations in Cuba should want to see peace prevail in that 
island. In February, 1898, our battleship Maine was blown 

up while at anchor in the 
harbor of Havana, and a 
large part of its crew were 
killed. Though the author 
of this act was unknown, 
public opinion in the 
United States held the 
Spaniards responsible for 
it and the deinand for war 
grew intense. For a time 
President McKinley tried 
to avert war by negoti- 
ations with Spain, but 
without success, and at 
last he laid the whole 
matter before Congress 
with the suggestion that 
American interference to 
stop the destructive con- 
flict in Cuba was justified 
by humanity and by our 
national interests. On 
April 19, 1898, Congress declared that the people of Cuba are, 
and of right ought to be, free and independent, and demanded 
that Spain at once withdraw from that island. Spain treated 
this demand as a declaration of war and hostilities soon began 
between the two countries. 

The contest opened with a brilliant naval victory in the 

Dewey's Far East. When war was declared, Commodore George Dewey 

victory at ^^^ ^^ Hong Kong with a small American fleet. He sailed at 

once from that port for the Philippine Islands, Spain's chief 




© Keystone Vieiv Co., Meadrille, Pa. 
General view of the wrecked Battleship Maine 
in Havana Harbor. 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN 



559 



possession in the Orient. On May 1, 1898, Dewey boldly entered 
the harbor of Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and destroyed 
the Spanish fleet which he found there, without the loss of a ship 
or a man. Dewey could have taken the city of Manila at once, 
but he did not have enough men to occupy it. Troops were sent 
to his aid from the United States, and after their arrival Manila 
was captured and Spanish rule in the East came to an end. 

Meanwhile our home fleet under Admiral Sampson began 
to blockade the Cuban ports and to watch for a Spanish 




© Keystone Vitw Co., Meaidnlle, Pa. 
The Battle of Manila Bay 

scjuadron which was reported to have sailed for America. The Santiago 
Cervera, the Spanish admiral, managed to slip into Santiago campaign 
harbor unobserved, but he was soon blockaded in that port 
by the American warships. A few daj^s later Lieutenant 
Hobson, with a crew of seven seamen, in a gallant attempt to 
bottle up the Spanish ships, sunk the collier Merrimnc in the 
entrance to Santiago harbor. This heroic enterprise failed of 
its purpose because the Merrimac did not sink at the exact 
spot selected, and Hobson and his men were taken by the 



560 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD 

Spaniards. It was then decided to send a military force against 
Santiago, but the expedition was delayed by the lack of prepara- 
tion and by bad management in the army. At last, General 
Shafter landed on the Cuban coast east of Santiago with about 
sixteen thousand men. On July 1st the Americans fought the 
land battle of Santiago, in which they captured El Caney and 
San Juan Hill. The Rough Riders, a volunteer regiment of 
cavalry led by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, won fame by its 
conduct in this fight. After this battle the American army 
threatened the city of Santiago. To escape capture in Santiago 
harbor, the Spanish fleet made a dash for the open sea, and on 
July 3d it was destroyed to the last ship in a great running 
fight off the southern coast of Cuba. Two weeks later Santiago 
surrendered, and soon after its fall, Shafter 's troops, who were suf- 
. f ering severely from malarial fevers, were brought north to Long 
Island. In the meantime General Miles led an American force 
against Porto Rico, but before the occupation of that island was 
completed the news came that Spain had agreed to make peace. 
A treaty of peace between Spain and the United States 
was signed in Paris in December, 1898, and ratified by our 
The treaty of Senate early the following year. By this treaty, Spain gave up 
peace her claim to Cuba and ceded Porto Rico and the island of Guam 

in the Pacific to the LTnited States. She was also forced to sell 
the Philippine Islands to us for twenty million dollars. 

The Spanish War made our people justly proud of their 
navy, and at the same time it revealed a sad lack of preparation 
Results of in the army. There was much confusion and inefficiency in the 
the Spanish management of the war department, and the sanitary condi- 
^ tions in the camps were so bad that many more soldiers died of 

disease than were slain in battle. This war gave us territorial 
possessions whose inhabitants were not yet ready for self- 
government and imposed upon us the task of fitting them for it. 
At the same time it l)ound the North and the South more closely 
together, won for our country the respect of foreign nations, 
and opened a new era in our history in which we were destined 
to play a larger part in the affairs of the world. 

Our New Possessions. — After the Spanish War, Porto 

Rico and Cuba were occupied for a time by the armies of the 

Porto Rico United States. Porto Rico, which had been ceded to us by 

Spain, was soon given a form of territorial government, and in 



OUR NEW POSSESSIONS 



561 



1917 the Porto Ricans were made citizens of the United States 
and given a larger share in the management of their own affairs. 
■ Porto Rico has prospered under American control; many 
schools have been established; good roads have been built; 
and the sugar crop of the island is five times as large as it was 
in the days of Spanish rule. In 1917 the United States bought 
from Dermiark a small group of islands just east of Porto Rico, 
in order to strengthen its grip upon the West Indies. 

When our country en- 
tered the Spanish War, 
Congress declared that we 
had no intention of annex- 
ing or controlling Cuba, but 
when the war was over it 
was necessary for our troops 
to occupy the island until 
the Cuban people could set 
up a government of their 
own. General' Leonard 
Wood, our military gover- 
nor in Cuba, was very suc- 
cessful in restoring order in 
that distracted island, in 
cleaning up its cities, and in 
preparing the way for a 
return to prosperity. The 
Cubans agreed to let the 
United States supervise 
their foreign affairs and 
their finances, and keep or- 
der in their country if they 
failed to do it themselves. With this understanding our soldiers 
were withdrawn in 1902, and the Cubans estaljlished a republic 
of their own. In 1906 there was an uprising against the presi- 
dent of Cuba, and we were forced to enter the island to restore 
order. When this was accomplished we withdrew again, and since 
that time the Cubans have succeeded in governing themselves. 
The Philippine Islands, which we acquired as a result of 
the Spanish War, contain about eight million inhabitants 
divided into more than eighty tribes, some of which are civilized, 
36 




1 1 nternntionnl Kewa Service, N. Y, 
Major General Leonard Wood 



Our relations 
with Cuba 



562 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD 



Insurrection 
in the 
Philippines 



SaUntany Channel 




\v4iik' others are little better 
than savages. The Fili- 
pinos, like the Cubans, had - 
rebelled against Spanish 
tyranny; and when they 
learned that our govern- 
ment, which thought that 
they were not yet fit to rule 
themselves, did not mean to 
recognize their indepen- 
dence at once, they rose in 
angry revolt against the 
United States. Under their 
leader, Aguinaldo, they held 
out for two years, and even 
after Aguinaldo was cap- 
tiured, his people carried on 
a guerrilla warfare for some 
time longer. But after much 
hard fighting the insurrec- 
The Philippine Islands ^Jq^ was at last Stamped 

out and the authority of the United States was firmly estab- 
lished throughout the islands. Sinc(> .peace 



„ ., „ « ftfaliila 

^ Manila Buy^'^r^i 




S E A U "^"^ \,lo 
""^"h, ^' •\<i-'^'' CELEBES 7§ 

NORTH BOR^ ,-s|^^o ^ SEA 



was restored in 



'is, ■ ' 



^ ^'^J-- 




S^M4^mN^:4|' 




Ripruiiiiced by pi r/nisniiin 11/ /hi I'liUiiilitjihiii Cnmrtiirriiil Matnum. 

A Group of Graduates at the Manila Normal School, Philippine Islands 



OUR POLICY IN THE FAR EAST 563 

the Philippines, pubhc schools have been established, industry 
encoinaged, sanitary conditions improved, and a civil govern- 
ment set up in which the natives are permitted to have a large 
share und(>r the guidance of American officials. But in spite 
of the progress they hav(^ made under American control, many 
of the Filipinos still desire indei)endeuce, and the political 
future of the islands is yet an imsettled question. 

In 1893 the white residents of the Hawaiian Islands, most, 
of whom were of American dc^scent, drove out the native queen 
and sought to have Hawaii annexed to the United States. Hawaii 
At first their request was not granted, but the Spanish War annexed 
opened the eyes of our i)eopk> to the importance of the Hawaiian 
port of Honolulu as a naval station and stopping point on the 
road from the United States to the Philippines, China, Japan, 
and Australia. Accordingly, while that war was going on, 
Hawaii was annexed, in 1898. The next year we ac(|uired the 
island of Tutuila in the? Samoan group in the south Pacific 
with its splendid harl)or of Pago Pago. 

Our Policy in the Far East.^Our interest in commerce 
upon the Pacific was greatly quickened by the acquisition of 
Hawaii and the Pliilippines. These islands were stepping-stones Trade with 
which l)rought us to the door of the Orient whose rich trade had *^® Orient 
attracted venturesome merchants ever since the Middle Ages. 
Indeed, as you will remem}:)er, America was discovered and 
its coasts explored by bold mariners who were seeking a new 
and safer route to the Indies. After the Spanish War we antici- 
pated a growing trade with the Far East. We not only expected 
to continue to buy its tea, spices, and silk, but we hoped to 
find in it a new market for our flour, lumber, and machinery. 

We found eager rivals for the trade of China. Russia, 
Germany, Great Britain, and France had already secured foot- 
holds upon the coast of that country and were seeking to extend We insist 
their control over considerable parts of its territory. Each of J|P°" *||® „ 
them hoped to keep for its own people the exclusive right to {^ china 
trade with the section of China which it controlled. There was 
grave danger that China would be partitioned among the com- 
mercial nations of the world. ^ Of course, the Chinese objected 
to this procedure, but as they had neglected to make any 
preparation to defend their country, they were at the mercy 
of its greedy neighbors. Our people looked with great disfavor 



564 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD 



The Boxer 
uprising in 
China 



Later devel- 
opments in 
the Far East 



upon the possible partition of China. They did not want to take 
any part in it, and they saw that if it went on there would be little 
Chinese trade left for them. John Hay, our secretary of state, in- 
sisted that the citizens of every country must have equal chances 
to trade in China. This he called the policy of the "open door." 
Early in 1900, while the nations concerned were still dis- 
cussing the "open door" policy, a serious outbreak occurred 
in China. A Chinese society called the Boxers secured control 
of the government at Peking, ordered the foreign ministers to 
leave the country, and tried to kill all the foreigners they could 

find. The German ambas- 
sador was murdered in the 
streets of Peking, and the 
representatives of all the 
other nations were closely 
besieged in the BHtish em- 
ba ssy . They made a gallant 
resistance and finally were 
rescued by a military force 
sent by the United States, 
Great Britain, France, Ilus- 
sia, and Japan. The Boxer 
uprising was suppressed and 
China was compelled to pay 
heavy damages to the na- 
tions whose citizens had suf- 
fered losses in it. Our share 
of this money was twenty- 
four million dollars, and 
when we found that our real 
damage was only eleven millions we returned the balance of the 
money to China. This act won the gratitude of the Chinese, and 
they are using the income from the returned indemnity to pay the 
expenses of C'hinese students in American schools and colleges. 

During the negotiations which followed the Boxer uprising, 
Secretary Hay succeeded in persuading the European powers 
to accept the "open door" policy in China. This diplomatic 
victory saved China from further partition. In 1904 the rival 
interests of Russia and Japan in northern China led to a war 
in which Japan was brilliantly successful. The next year peace 




Prom Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. 
Loading for South America, Japan and China. 



THE PANAMA CANAL 



565 



was brought about between the warring nations through the 
intervention of President Roosevelt. As time passed, the 
Chinese, who had made their country a repul)He in 1912, began 
to realize that th'ey had more to fear from Japan than from 
the powers of Europe. During the World War, which began in 
1914, Japan seized the German territory on the Chinese coast 
and made demands upon China which leave that coimtry little 
better than a vassal of its island neighbor. Our country can- 
not help but look with disfavor upon these encroachments upon 
the rights of the Chinese. 

The Panama Canal. 
— Men had dreamed of 
a ship canal to connect 
the Atlantic and the 
Pacific ever since Balboa 
planted the flag of Spain 
at Panama, but for cen- 
turies nothing came ni 
these dreams. In 1882 n 
French company head 
by Ferdinand de Lesseps. 
who had dug the Suez 
Canal a few years be- 
fore, began to cut a canal 
across the isthmus of 
Panama ; but after spend - 
ing two hundred and 
seventy-eight million 
dollars this company 
could no longer pay its 
bills and its work 
stopped. Our people had long talked of a waterway to join the 
two oceans, and when, in the war with Spain, the battleship 
Oregon had to steam thirteen thousand miles, from our western 
coast to join the American fleet in the West Indies "they began 
to think seriously of the project. When the Spanish War 
ended, our new territories and growing commercial interests in 
the Pacific seemed to make an interoceanic canal a necessity. 

Several preliminary steps had to be taken before we could 
actually begin to dig an isthmian canal. In 1850, when the 




John Hay 
Through the efforts of Secretary Hay, the 
"open door" policy in China was accepted. 



The idea 
of an inter- 
oceanic canal 



566 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD 

Getting rush to the Californian gold fields first turned our att(.>ntioii to 

ready to dig ^ possible waterway across the isthmus of Panama, we had 
made a treaty with Great Britain which gave that country an 
equal interest with our own in any canal that might be built 
to join the two oceans. In 1901 this treaty was set aside by a 
new agreement, that the United States might build and control 
the canal and that it should be open to the ships of all nations 
on equal terms. Next we had to select a route for the canal. 
Some engineers preferred a line across Panama while others 
wanted to construct the canal through Nicaragua. Congress 
decided in favor of the Panama route if we could come to 
terms with Colombia, across whose territory the canal was to 
be located, and with the French company which had already 
done much work upon it. In 1903 Secretary Hay drew up a 
treaty with the representative of Colombia by which our govern- 
ment agreed to pay that country ten million dollars in cash and 
a yearly rental of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a 
strip of land six miles wide across the isthmus. The Colombian 
government rejected this treaty in the hope of getting more 
money from the United States. Fearful that the United States 
might turn to the Nicaragua route the people of Panama 
declared their independence of Colomliia and set up a govern- 
ment of their own. President Roosevelt promptly recognized 
. the new state of Panama, and quickly made a treaty with it by 
which the United States secured control of a canal zone ten 
miles wide on practically the same terms that we had offered 
to Colombia. Then it was an easy matter to buy the right of 
the French company for forty million dollars. 

Before we did any actual digging upon the canal a vast 

amount of work was done to make the isthnms a healthful 

"Making the place for the workmen. Its cities were cleaned up, its swamps 

dirt fly drained, and other preventive measures were taken against 

malaria and j^ellow fever. When everything was ready we began, 

in the language of President Roosevelt, to "make the dirt fly," 

and in spite of innumerable difficulties, the work was pushed 

with such vigor that the canal was opened to the world in 1914. 

The Panama Canal is the greatest triumph of engineering 

in modern times. Starting from the Atlantic Coast this canal 

Description runs at sea level for eight miles. Then an immense clam turns 

of the canal the valley of the Chagres River into a lake twenty-two miles 



THE PANAMA CANAL 



567 



long, and ships of the largest size are lifted to the level of this 
lake by means of the famous Gatun locks. After proceeding 
across the lake and through the deep Culebra cut, they are 
lowered by other kx-ks to sea level near the Pacific end of the 
canal. The succ(^ss of this great undertaking was du(! in large 
measure to the skill and leadership of the army engineer in 
charge of it, Colonial (1. W. Goethals. 




Photo by Brown Bros. 
The Panama Canal 
The U. S. Battleship "Wisconsin" passing through Gatun Locks on the Atlantic side of 
the Isthmus. Ships are towed through the locks by the electric locomotives seen on both 
sides of the lock chamber. 



The opening of the Panama Canal was an event of great 

importance in the history of our coimtry and of the world. It 

almost doubled the value of our navy by enabling our warships Importance 

to pass quicklv back and forth between our eastern and west- ^f this great 

. work 

em coasts. It brought New York and San Francisco more than 

eight thousand miles nearer by sea than they were before, 

quickened trade by giving all our Atlantic and Gulf cities easier 

access to the Pacific, and lowered freight rates between our 

eastern and our western coasts. It particularly benefited the 



568 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD 




OUR RELATIONS WITH MEXICO 569 

people of our Mississippi Valley and Gulf states by giving them 
an easy water route by which their products can reach the 
markets of western South America, Australia, and the Orient. 

Our Relations with Mexico. — Mexico won its independence 
from Spain in 1821, but its people showed little fitness for self- 
government. For many years one revolution followed another The history 
in rapid succession. Between 1821 and 1877 the distracted °^ Mexico 
country had about eighty presidents. In 1877 Porfirio Diaz 
secured control of the Mexican govermiient and kept it in his 
hands nearly all the time until 1911. In name, Diaz was the 
president of Mexico; in reality he was its dictator. Under his 
rule the country seemed orderly and prosperous, but its condi- 
tion was actually very l^ad. The government was corrupt and 
the masses of the Mexican people were wretchedly poor and 
densely ignorant. 

Mexico is naturally a rich country. Its mineral resources 
are unsurpassed; its vast upland districts are well adapted to 
grazing; and its hot coastal plains contain splendid forests of Foreign 
mahogany and rosewood and are capable of producing sugar, interest in 
coffee, cotton, rubber, and tropical fruits in great profusion. Mexico 
But there was little enterprise or capital in Mexico to develop 
these rich resources, and Diaz offered every inducement to 
foreign capitalists to invest their money in his country. Tempted 
by the prospect of enormous profits, many American, British, 
and German business men invested in Mexican mines, oil 
lands, orchards, rubber plantations, stock ranches, and railroads, 
and thousands of their representatives went to live in Mexico 
to look after these enterprises. The Mexican people saw the 
great natural wealth of their country rapidly passing into the 
hands of foreigners. 

The autocratic rule of Diaz was supported by a ring of 
corrupt Mexican politicians and by the foreigners to whom 
he had granted rich concessions in Mexico. At last a Mexican Civil war in 
patriot named Francisco Madero put forward a program of Mexico 
reform and took up arms against Diaz. This revolutionary 
movement spread so rapidly that in 1911 Diaz was forced to 
resign and leave the country and before the close of that year 
Madero was elected president of Mexico. But IVIadero could 
not win the support of all the Mexican people, and early in 
1913 he was captured and assassinated by General Huerta 



570 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD 



Wilson's 
policy of 
"watchful 
waiting" 



who thus became diettitor of Mexico. General Carranza, who 
became the leader of the friends of the former Madero Govern- 
ment, refused to ivcognizc^ the authority of Huerta and civil 
war continued in tlie country. 

'I'll is was the situation in Mexi(;o when Woodrow Wilson 
became president in 1913. He refused to recognize Huerta as 
th(> rightful ruler of Mexico and sympathized with the Mexicans 
who were trying to drive him from power. Many of our people 
wanted our government to interfere in Mexico to ]:)rotect 




© Keystone View Co., MeadvUle, Pa. 
United States Soldiers in Action on the Mexican Border 

American lives and property, but President Wilson felt that we 
ought not to nietldle in the affairs of a ncughl^oring republic, 
preferring t-o follow what he called a policy of " watchful waiting." 
Meanwhile the feeling in Mexico was growing more hostile 
toward Americans. In April, 1914, some sailors from one of our 
warships were arrested at Tampico where they had landed to 
buy gasoline. They were soon releascxl, but the American 
admii'al demanded that the Mexicans apologize by saluting our 
flag. Huerta refused this demand, and by the command of 
President Wilson our navy seized the cily of Vera Cruz after 
a fight in which a few Americans and many INTexicans were 



REFERENCES 571 

killed. liniiKMliate war \vasa\'(M-(('(l (hi-ouiih lluM^ITorls of Argen- 
tina,. Brazil, and Chili to arrange a settlement between the United 
States and Mexico. In tiie meantime Carranza was st(!adily gain- 
ing ground and Huertasoon gave up and fled from Mexico. Be- 
fore the end of 19 1 4 our forces were withdrawn f rom\'(>ra Cruz. 

Scarcely was Carranza at the head of affairs in M(>xico when 
a bandit named Villa led an insurrection against him in the 
northern stat(\s of that country. Lawless bands of men roamed American 
here and there, killing any Americans who remained in that troops on 
part of Mexico and stealing any prop(n-ty that they could find, border 
Still our government took no action to protect its citizens in 
Mexico. At last, in March, 1916, Villa led a force of brigands 
across the Rio Grande, attacked the town of Columbus in New 
Mexico, and kilknl several of its citizens. Then with Carranza's 
consent. President Wilson S(^nt six thousand men under General 
Pershing into Mexico to hunt down Mlla and his force, but it 
proved easy for these bandits to keep out of the way of the 
American troops. About the same time a large force of militia 
was sent to defend our Mexican border. At the beginning of 
1917 the American force under Pershing was recalled from 
Mexico, where it had accomplished very little. The entrance 
of the United States into the World War in Europe in 1917 
diverted the attention of our people from the Mexican situation, 
but affairs in that country were left in a very unsettled con- 
dition. 

REFERENCES. 

Paxson, The New Nation; Bassett, A Short Hidory of the Ihiited 
States; Peck, Tmenty Yearn of Jhe Republic; Latane, America as a World 
Power; Ogg, National Progress; Lodge, The W(tr irilh Spain. 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

L The Venezuela Boundary Dispute. I^assett, .-1 Short History of 
the United States, 777-78L 

2. The Causes of the War with Spniu. Latane, Airierica as a World 
Poiver, 3-28. 

3'. Dewey's Victory at Mnuila. Latane, America as a World Poirer, 
29-38. 

4. The Campaign against Santiago. Latane, America as a World 
Poiver, 46-.54. 



572 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD 

5. The Naval Battle of Santiago. Latan6, America «« a World 
Power, 54-57. 

6. The Insurrection in the Philippines. Latane, America as a World 
Power, 82-99. 

7. The Boxer Uprising in China. Latan6, America as a World 
Power, 105-113. 

8. The Republic of Cuba. Latan6, America as a World Poirer, 175- 
191. 

9. The Panama Canal. Bassett, A Short History of the United 
Stales, 814-822. 

10. Our Trouble with Mexico. Ogg, National Progress, 284-304. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Stedman, Cuba ; ScoW&rd, The Men of the "Mai7ie" ; Hovey, 
The Battle of Manila; Page, The Dragon of the Seas; Guiterman, The 
Call to the Colors; The Rush of the Oregon; Woodberry, The Islands of the 
Sea. 

Reminiscences: Roosevelt, The Rough Riders; Autobiography; 
Evans, A Sailor's Log; Schley, Forty-fire Years under the Flag; Funston, 
Memoirs of Two Wars; Miles, Serving the Republic; Hobson, The Sinking 
of the "Merrimac." 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. What South American products do we need? ^^'hat do the people 
of South America buy of us? Can you suggest any ways in which our 
trade with South America could be increased? 

2. Did we have just cause for war with Spain in 1898? Where is 
Havana? Hong Kong? Honolulu? Manila?. Santiago? 

3. Was Aguinaldo a patriot or a rebel? Ought our country to give the 
Fihpinos their independence? If so, when? 

4. What is meant by the "open door" policy in China? Is this door 
in any danger of being closed now? Why? 

5. What advantages has the Panama route over the proposed Nicara- 
gua route for a canal? Did we wrong Colombia in acquiring the Panama 
Canal zone? Give a reason for your answer. 

6. Was President Wilson's policy of "watchful waiting" in Mexico 
wise? Why? Would it be right for our country to make war upon Mexico 
to protect our citizens against the efforts of the Mexican government to 
recover from them the concessions which the Diaz government gave them? 



CHAPTER XXX 



Our Country in the World War 



The War in Europe. — On the first of August, 1914, the 
world was startled by the outbreak of a great war in Europe. 
This war was caused by the ardent belief of the German people Causes 
in their superiority over other races and by the wicked desire 
of their leaders to con- 
quer and rule other 
countries. ''We are the 
missionaries of human 
progress," said the Ger- 
man emperor; "God 
has called us to civiUze 
the world." "Might 
gives the right to oc- 
cupy or to conquer," 
was the spirit of Ger- 
many. For forty years 
the German Empire 
had been growing in 
population, in wealth, 
and in readiness for 
war. When its rulers 
felt that they were fully 
prepared they took ad- 
vantage of a contro- 
versy between Austria 
and Serbia over the 
assassination of the 
Austrian Crown Prince, 

to provoke a war that ^n American Soldier in the World War 

was destined to have a far different outcome than they dreamed. 
At first, Germany aiid Austria fought against Russia, 
France, England, and the smaller states, Belgium, Serbia, and 
Montenegro. Presently Bulgaria and Turkey cast their lot Nations 
with Germany, while the great powers, Japan and Italy, and engaged 

573 




574 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



the leaser states, Portugal, Roumania, and Greece, joined the 
AlHes. Indeed, before the war ended, nearly the whole world was 

drawn into it. Judged 
by the extent of the 
countries involved, by 
the immense number of 
men engaged, and by the 
frightful destructive- 
ness with which it was 
waged, the war which 
Germany recklessly 
forced upon the world in 
1914 was the greatest 
and the most terrible 
struggle in all history. 
T h e Germans 

One of thu Great Skoda llowitzcis Ui>cd bj the p 1 a U U O tl tO C T U S ll 
Germans to Destroy the Belgian Forts. jri • l 1 il j. 

The western 1 ranee quickly, then to 

front break the power of Russia, and finally to strike at Great Britain 

with all their might. But when they tried to invade France 





© Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. 
Liege, Belgium 

The ruin and desolation caused by German shells. 



THE WAR IN EUROPE 



575 



throu<»;h neutral Belgium thai hiavo Iit(l(> nation (Icfcnidcd 

itself so vigorously that tiie ( icMinaii advance was delayed for 

ten days. Then the tiray-chid ( Jerrnan hosts svve})t on, driving 

the French ai'niies and a small hut heroic British force before 

them, until the ruthless invaders had ahiiost reached the gates 

of Paris. Here the French turned at the command of their 

great leader, Marshal Joffre, defeated the Germans in the 

famous battle of the 

Marne, and hiulcd them 

back from Paris. The 

Germans then dug a line 

of intrenchments from 

the North Sea through 

northern France to 

Switzerland. Many 

bloody battles were 

fought along this line, 

but its position was not 

much changed for the 

next three years. In 

1916 the Germans made 

a supreme effort to 

break through the 

French line at Verdun, 

but the hevoic French 

said, "They shall not 

pass," and the Germans 

did not pass, though 

they lost half a million 

men in the attempt. 

While the tides of 
battle ebbed and flowed 
along the western front 
the Germans and the 
Austrians were also fighting hard against the Russians on 
the east. For a time the Russians resisted with the utmost 
gallantry, but they lacked supplies and in the end the Germans 
overran the western provinces of their country. Early in 1917 
a revolution in Russia drove the Czar from power, and before 
the end of that year Russia was practically out of the war. 




Ui,</rnro,„I .(• Underwood, N. Y. 
Jerusalem Delivered 
Triumphal entry of Genera! Allenby into the Holy The eastem 
City after its capture by the British forces. front 



576 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



Other fields 
of war 



At first our 
country was 
neutral 



The rising 
feeling 
against 
Germany 



In the meantime fierce fighting was raging in many other 
places. The Italians and the Austrians were locked in combat 
upon the borderland of their countries. In the Balkan peninsula 
the Germanic powers devastated Serbia and conquered Rou- 
mania. A combined British and French expedition against 
Constantinople met a disastrous repulse at Gallipoli. There 
was also fighting in Asia and in Africa, where all of Germany's 
colonies were wrested from her. 

Why We Entered the World War. — At first American 

public opinion about 
the great war in Europe 
was divided. Some 
people favored Ger- 
many; a far larger 
number sympathized 
with the Allies and 
hoped that they would 
win. Many were con- 
fused al)out the ques- 
tions at issue or in- 
difi^erent about what 
seemed so far away 
from them. When the 
war began, President 
Wilson promptly de- 
clared that the Uni- 
ted States would not 
take sides and appealed 
to our people to be 
neutral even in thought. 
"Every man who really loves America," he said, "will act and 
speak in the tnw spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of 
impai'tiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned." 
When he said this the president hoped that by keeping out of 
the strife abroad we might be free to play a large part in 
restoring peace and prosperity when the war ended. 

But it was impossible for Americans to be neutral in 
thought. They could not help condemning the wicked German 
invasion of Belgium, or admiring the plucky stand made by 
that little country, or being shocked by the horrid atrocities 




British Official PhoLograipli 
Tanks and Infantry Going into Action at Bapaume 



WHY WE ENTERED THE WORLD WAR 577 



committed by the Germans in Belgium and France. Slowly 
om- people found out that Germany was fiUing our country 
with spies, hii'ing American writers and speakers to plead her 
cause among us, trjdng to stir up labor troubles in our muni- 
tion plants and factories, and seeking to foment ill feehng 
against us among our Latin American neighbors to the south. 
Day by day it was becoming clearer that the war was 
really a struggle between autocratic government and demo- 




Hand-to-Hand Fight at Anas 
British troops repulse a German attack under cover of gas. 

cratic government, and that if autocracy won in Europe 
democracj^ would not be safe anywhere in the world. 

Eaily in the World War our ocean-borne commerce began 
to suffer very much as it had suff(n'ed during the long struggle 
between Great Britain and Napoleon one hundred years before. Interference 
Great Britain made new rules declaring that copper, rubber, ^'^" °"^ 
cotton, and oil — all articles which Germany needed — were 
contraband of war, and seized many American ships which 
were carrying these goods to Germany or to neutral countries, 
like Holland, from which they could easily be sent to Germany. 
Our government protested, but Great Britain refused to yield, 
and nothing further was done, because Great Britain must 
37 



commerce 



578 OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



pay for the property she had taken if we could prove that she 
had regally broken the law of nations by seizing it. Moreover, 
our people were slowly but surely coming to sec that Great 
Britain and her allies were really fighting our battle in the 
heroic stand which they were making against the ruthless 
ambition of (lermany. 

In the meantime a far more serious controversy was begin- 
ning between the United States and Germany. The Germans 
began to complain bitterly because we were selling munitions 
of war to the Allies, as we had a perfect right to do if we could 

deliver the goods. 
Then Germany threat- 
ened that her sub- 
marines would sink 
without warning British 
and neutral vessels 
foimd in a certain part 
of the sea around the 
British Islands, and on 
May 7, 1915, she did 
thus sink the great 
British ship Lusitania, 
drowning nearly twelve 
hundred passengers, of 
whom one hundred and 
fourteen were Amer- 
icans. This atrocious 
crhne — an act of whole- 

A German Submarine Lying in Wait for a Steamer ^^^^ murder^violatcd 

rules of warfaic long recognized by all civilized nations, and 
some people thought it should have been promptly followc^d 
by an American declaration of war against G(n-many. But our 
people were yet far from united in this opinion, and President 
Wilson only cai'i-icnl on a correspondence with the German 
gov(M-nment which for a time resulted in nothing very dc^finite. 
Meanwhile, other v(^ssels were sunk l\y German submarines, 
and when American lives were lost by the sinking of 
the British passenger ship Sus-'iex in the English Channel in 
March, 1916, President Wilson told Germany flatly that unless 
she warned vessels before sinking them and placed their pas- 




Sunk by a Submarine — 1918 
The loss of American lives through the persistence of Germany 
in sinking British and neutral vessels without warning and without 
placing their passengers and crews in safety was one of the causes 
of the entrance of our country into the World War in 1917. In the 
picture a great ocean liner has been torpedoed and set on fire and 
is taking its final plunge into the sea. 



WHY WE ENTERED THE WORLD WAR 



579 



senders and crew in safety, the United States would break off 
all relations with her. The CJerinan governnunit i)roinised to 
do this, and for a time it seemed as if war niij>ht be averted. 

But on the last day of January, 1917, (Jerniany infomied 
tiie llnited States that on the next day she meant to renew her 
rutliless submarine warfan; without further notice. About 
the same time we leai-ned that (lermany was trying to persuade At war with 
Mexico to join with Japan in attacking the United States. Germany 
President Wilson i^romptly dismissed the (Icrman ambassador 




© Flarri^ A Ewirig, Washuiglon, D. C. 
President Wilson Making His Historic Address to Congress Urging the Recognition of a 
State of War with Germany 

from our country, and on March 12th he ordered the arming of 
American merchant ships against submarines. Finally, on 
April 2, 1917, the president went before Congress and urged 
it to recognize that a state of war already existed. Four days 
later Congress declared that our country was at war with 
Germany. 

The spirit in which we entered the World War was elo- 
quently stated by President Wilson. "We fight," he said, "for ^fj^j^^^^"* 
the rights of nations great and small and tlu^ privilege of men states our 
everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The cause 



580 



OUR COXJNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



world must be made safe for democracy. We have no selfish 
ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We are 
but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall 
be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the 

faith and the freedom of nations can make them 

To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, 
everything that we are and everything that we have, with the 
pride of those who know that the day has come when America 
is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the prin- 
ciples that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which 
she has treasured." 

How We Helped to Win the War. — Our entry into the 
war cheered the hearts of the weary peoples who had been 
Our allies fighting Germany for nearly three years. The knowledge that 
encouraged ^.^g Americans were coming to their aid did not give the English 
and the French more courage for they already had it to the 
utmost, but it did inspire them to fight on with a stronger 
faith in the final triumph of their cause. Soon after we declared 
war, Marshal Joffre, the victor of the Marne, Viviani, an elo- 
quent French statesman, and Arthur J. Balfour, one of the 
foremost men in the British government, visited the United 
States. Everywhere they were received with wild enthusiasm. 
The English and the French generously gave our government 
the benefit of their experiences in the war, and at the same time 
they showed us how we could hasten the hour of final victory 
by providing the money, food, ships, and fighting men needed 
to bring that hour to pass. 

Our country was rich and we began at once to pour out 
our wealth like water to promote the cause to which we had 
We furnish devoted ourselves. Before the end of 1917 we loaned almost 
money four billion dollars to Great Britain, France, Italy, and the 

other countries banded together against Germany. Nearly all 
this money was spent in the United States for food, clothing, 
machinery, and other supplies which the Allies needed. Within 
a few months Congress appropriated the enormous sum of 
twenty-two bilhon dollars for war purposes. Everything that 
money could do to hasten our preparation for war was done with 
a lavish hand. 

All our allies needed our cotton and our copper, and France 
and Italy could not carry on very much longer unless we sent 



HOW WE HELPED TO WIN THE WAR 



581 



them iron and coal. Every effort was made to furnish these 

necessary raw materials to the nations by whose side we fought. 

Most of all, the allied countries needed food for their armies We send 

and for their people. This we strove to save and send them, supplies and 

Herbert C. Hoover, who had proved his ability as the head 

of the American Relief Commission in starving Belgium, was put 

in charge of the food situation. B}^ appeals to our people to 




I By Committee on Public Injurmaiion . 
Drawing the Draft Numbers 
Secretary of War Baker opening the first capsule and reading the number which called 
all men of that series to the colors. 



"save the waste," by establishing meatless and wheatless days, 
and by limiting the sale of sugar, he made it possible to send 
to Europe vast quantities of these essential foods. 

Large numbers of new ships were needed to carry food, 
raw materials, military supplies, and our soldiers to Europe. 
This was a vital necessity, for every month the German sub- We build 
marines were sinking many merchant vessels. To meet this ships 
need the government began to build ships on a vast scale. 
Under the leadership of our ablest business men, great shipyards 
were created almost as if by magic. In the meantime our 



582 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



We send 
fighting men 
to France 



navy joiiWHl that of Great Britain in keeping the paths of the 
sea open to tlie coninieree of th(^ world l)y hunting submarines 
and by convoying ships through the danger zon(\ 

We gave our men as freely as our wealth to save the world 
from the brutal ambition and autocratic power of Germany. 
As soon as we entered the war, our navy and our small regular 
army were recruited to their full strength and the national 
guard of the various states was called into the service of the 

nation. Presently a 
^'selective draft"" law 
was passed, under 
which ten million young 
nuni l)etween the ages 
of twenty-one and 
thirty-one were en- 
rolled, and as fast as 
provision could be made 
foi- training them, they 
w(>re selected by lot 
fiom this list and sent 
to the training camps. 
Later the draft law was 
extended to include all 
citizens between eight- 
een and forty-five years 
of age, and over thirteen 
million more men were 
enrolled under it. 
Thirty-two great train- 
ing camps or canton- 
ments were built in 
various parts of the country. In a little more than a j^ear 
and a half after we declaied war against Germany we had 
two million uwn in Europe and as many mor(^ were in the 
camps at home getting ready to go. The splendid sj^irit of this 
mighty host is best expressed in one of its stirring songs: 

"The Y:uiks arc coming, the Yanks are coming, 
The drums rum-tumming everywliere, 
We'll be over, we're coming over, 

And we won't come back till it's over over there. 




General John T. Pershing 
Commander-in-Chief of tiie American Expeditionary 
Force. 



FIGHTING IN FRANCE 



583 



We must next follow our soldiers "over th(u-c" and see 
what they did to help win the war. 

Fighting in France. — Notlongafter we declared war, General 
John J. Pershing, who had been selected by President Wilson to 
lead the American Expeditionary^ Force, established his head- Preparation 
quarters in France. A little later the first American troops ^" France 
landed at a French port, where they were welcomed with the 
utmost enthusiasm. As fast as American soldiers reached 
France they were taken to training camps where the}' at once 
l)e,iian intensive; preparation for the grim work ahead of them. 




U. S. Officiiil I'liotu,jia[jli. 
In the Trenches in France 
The American soldier on the right is preparing to throw a hand grenade. 

In the meantime we were astonishing the world by what we 
were doing in France to support and care for the mighty host 
of Americans who were coming. Great docks were built; rail- 
roads were repaired and equipped ; vast warehouses were con- 
structed and filled with supplies; extensive hospitals were pro- 
vided; and everything else was done that could minister to 
the health or to the efficiency of our men. While all this 
work was going forward, more Ameiican soldiers were crossing 
the Atlantic. By the beginning of 1918 we had three hundred 
thousand in training behind the westei-n liatlle front. 



584 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



Our soldiers in the World War found that tlie progress of 
science and iiivention since our Civil War a half century earlier 
had changed methods of warfare quite as much as it had trans- 
formed industrial life. They crossed the Atlantic in great 
transports which were convoyed by warships to protect them 
from the liu'king submarines of the enemy. They grew accus- 
tomed to seeing aeroplanes giving battle in the clouds above 
them. Like their French and English allies and their German 
enemies, they were armed with repeating rifles, with machine 
guns firing hundreds of shots a mimite, and with cannon which 




r. ,S'. Oinnal rhuloynii,/, 
An American Heavy Gun on the Western Front 
One of the huge long-range guns on railway mounts used by the American forces in 
blasting their way to Sedan. 



threw the heaviest shells many miles. They were forced to 
wear gas masks to protect themselves from the poisonous gases 
which the enemy threw into then" lines, and they were taught 
how to hurl still more deadly gases and liquid fire against the 
foe. When the time came they took their places in a battle 
line hundreds of miles in extent, all parts of which were con- 
nected by telegraph and by telephone. Observers in scouting 
aeroplanes watched the movements of the enemy and photo- 
graphed the country behind his lines. The generals quickly 
passed from place to place in automobiles, the wounded were 



FIGHTING IN FRANCE 



585 



carried to the hospitals in motor ambulances, and supplies of 
all kinds were brought to the front by great trains of motor 
trucks. 

The collapse of Russia had greatly strengthened the 
Germans by permitting them to transfer large numbers of Terrific 
their soldiers from the Russian to the French front. By the German 
spring of 1918, however, the rulers of Germany saw plainly western 
that if they were ever to win the war they must do so befort; front 




Commanders of the Allied Armies 



.5. Ojlicia! Fholuyniph 



In the foreground, Marshal Petain, France. In line in the background, from left to 

right. Marshal Joffre, Marshal Foch, France; Field Marshal Haig, England; General 

Pershing, America; General Gillain, Belgium; General Albricci, Italy; General Haller, 
Poland. 

many more of the coming host of Americans arrived. Accord- 
ingly, they began a series of terrific drives against the British 
and French Hnes. In March they advanced toward the 
important city of Amiens which they threatened but could 
not take. Just after this drive General Foch, a brilliant French 
soldier who had played a great part in winning the battle of the 
Marne in 1914, was put in supreme command of all the allied 
forces. In April the Germans pushed forward toward the 



586 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



Our first 
battles in 
France 



Channel ports but were checked with heavy losses. In May 
they launched an attack which cari'ied them to the Marne and 
enajbled "them to threaten Paris once more. 

For some months after our soldiers ai'rived in France they 
were kept in training camjjs or stationed in quiet sectors of 
the long line tVom Belgium to Switzei'land. Sometimes small 
detachments of them fought in company with British or French 
troops. But it was not imtil the great German drive toward 

"V"' v; "' 




The Five Great German Offensives of 1918 

the Marne in May, 1918, that American troops took a promi- 
nent part in the fighting. At (-antigny they won a small 
battle in a clean-cut way wiiicli gave the enemy a foretaste of 
what was coming. A few days later, at Chateau-Thierry, they 
hurled back a charge of the Prussian Guard and drove the 
Germans before them in a fierce counter attack. This victory 
was promptly followed by a brilliant action at Belleau Wood. 
Never have Amei'icans fought more gallantly than they did in 
June, 1918, in their first battle in France, 



FIGHTING IN FRANCE 



587 



On July 15, 1918, the (lennans bej>;an their last f>;roat drive 
in France. Their first rush carried them across the Marne, 
but they were soon stopped by the French and the iVniericans. 
Then the allied forces drove the Germans ])ack across th(^ 
Marne and, in three weeks of stul)born fighting-, r(>covered all 
the territory that had been lost in May and June. Our soldiers 
took an active part in this great struggle, and toward its end 
they especially distinguished themselves by taldng and holding 
the town of Fismes. 



The second 
battle of the 
Marne 




F^Xr^-^^-^^^-'-^vA^t^ 



'^f 



or !)t^ 



The Battle of St. Mihjel 
The numbers refer to the divisions of the American army engaged. 



This second battle of the Marne was the beginning of 
General Foch's great offensive movement, an attack which 
never relaxed until the Germans begged for peace. Everywhere The allied 
on the western front the British, French, and Americans ham- offensive 
mered the German line so that the enemy had no time to rest 
or to reorganize his defense. By this time a quarter of a 
million Americans were pouring into France every month. 
Hitherto our men had fought as a part of the French army, 
but in September the American army, under the direct command 



588 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



of General Pershing, won a great battle at St. Mihiel. In this 
battle we captured nearly fourteen thousand prisoners, took 
hundreds of guns, and released many French villages which 
had been held by the Germans since early in the war. 

In the general attack which Marshal Foch was now waging 
against the whole German line, the part assigned to the Ameri- 
The Meuse- cans was to drive the enemy down the Meuse Valley and out 
Argonne of i\^q great Argonne forest which lies west of that river. If this 
movement succeeded it would cut one of the main railroads 
by which the Germans were supplied and put their entire army 
in a most dangerous position. On September 26, 1918, our 
army began the task with a dashing attack, and from that time 

until the end of the 
war it was constantly 
engaged. The country 
over which we fought 
was broken, densely 
wooded, and strongly 
fortified. Every point 
of vantage was held by 
the Germans with ma- 
chine guns. The enemy 
resisted stubbornly, but 
free Americans proved 
more than a match for 
the highly disciplined 
soldiers of autocratic 
Germany. This was especially true when men fought singly 
or in little groups, as it was often necessary to fight in the dense 
forest of tli^e Argonne. Day after day, in spite of heavy losses, 
the Americans pushed ahead until their task was accomplished. 
With one of their main roads to Germany cut, and knowing 
that the Austrians, Bulgarians, and Turks had already given 
up, the Germans asked for an armistice, and on November 1 1 , 
1918, the actual fighting of the world's greatest war came to 
an end. 

War Work at Home. — The heroic and victorious service 
of our soldiers in France was made possible by the constant 
and ardent support which they received from our people at 
home. We were very slow to realize that our honor and our 




Briefly at Rest in the Argonne 

American "doughboys" grouped about the entrance 
to their dugout. 



WAR WORK AT HOME 



589 



future safety required us to join in the war against Germany, 
but when we once saw this fact clearly we threw ourselves into 
the struggle with all our hearts and with all our vast resources. 
Never before in our history had we been so united in purpose 



FIRST AMD SECOtID PHASES 

LA5T PHA5E OF AtVAMCE 




Y 



VEMUtl 



The Battle of the Meuse-Argonne 
The numbers refer to the divisions of the American army engaged. 

and in effort as we were during the trying days of 1917 and 1918. 
There had been doubt about the stand of millions of our people 
of German birth or German parentage in case of war with their 
fatherland, but when the war came most of them proved that 



590 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



Raising 
money to 
carry on 
the war 



Working 
to win 




© I ,„l, ,■„■„,.! A- 
A Glimpse of the American Battleship Fleet 



t,N. 



they were-^in the woixls of President Wilson — ''as true and 
loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty 
or allegiance." 

Our government, as we have seen, appropriated immense 
sums of money to equip and maintain our army and navy, and 
to help our allies. It could only get the money by taxing 
the people or by boiTowing from them. Both these methods 
were used. Soon after the war began, very heavy taxes were 
imposed upon the profits of industries and upon the incomes of 
individuals. In addition to the vast revenues from these 
taxes, many billions of dollars were l)()rrowed from the people 
by selling them interest-l)earing bonds. In every one of the 
five great " Liberty Loan " campaigns, as the bond-selling efforts 
were called, the people promptly loaned their money to help 

our governinent carry 
on the war. As a con- 
sequence, millions of 
Americans, rich and 
poor alike, became the 
owners of Liberty 
Bonds. 

Our peojjle were 
equally prompt in meet- 
ing every other demand 
made ui)on them by 
their government. 
They accepted without 




A Liberty Loan Drive 
Using a captured German submarine to get more 
subscriptions. 



HOW PEACE WAS MADE 



591 



complaint many unusual rostrictions ui)ou their freedom to 
carry on business as they pleascni. Early in the war tlu; presi- 
dent took control of all the railroads in the country and oper- 
ated them as one system in order to make th(^m better serve the 
war needs of the nation. For the same reason all ships were 
seized for the use of the government. Prices were fixed upon 
wheat, sugar, coal, and steel, in order to prevent selfish men 
from making excessive profits upon these essential commodities. 
Workers flocked to the shipyards and munition plants, thousands 
of war gardens were planted, and the farmers of America toiled 
as never before to produce food for our armies and for the 
peoples warring against Germany. Many of our business men 
and our scientists gave 
up their own work in 
order to serve their 
country without pay. 

Our people were 
equally zealous in their 
support of all the 
humanitarian societies 
which sought to pro- 
mote the welfare of the 
soldiers. They joined 
the Red Cross by mil- 
lions, and all over the 
land patriotic women 
worked in this society 
da}^ after day to make the hospital supplies which were needed 
in vast quantities. At the same time the people gave freely of 
their money to support the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion, the Knights of Columbus, the Salvation Army, and the 
Jewish Welfare Board, all of which were mitiring in their 
efforts to be of real service to our men in camp and on the battle- 
fields of France. 

How Peace Was Made.- — By the terms of the armistice 
which was signed on November 11, 1918, the Germans agreed 
to evacuate France, Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and that part Terms of the 
of Germany west of the Rhine, and all these regions were armistice 
quickly occupied by the allied troops. The Germans also 
agreed to withdraw within the Iwixlers of their own country 




Caring for 
the men in 
the army 



U. S. Official I'liotoiiraph 
With the Salvation Army in France 
Making doughnuts for the "dough boys." 



592 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



on the eastern front and to renounce the treaties which they 
had imposed upon Russia and Roumania. Germany further 
promised to send home the prisoners she had taken, to restore 
the money she had stolen, to repair the damage she had done, 
and to surrender vast quantities of arms and war materials. 
Finally she agreed to give up all the submarines and the greater 
part of her fleet. In a word, by signing the armistice, the 
Germans acknowledged that they were thoroughly beaten. 

Soon after the armistice was signed, a conference of all 




^1 Intirnalional Film Scrcicx. 
The Greatest Naval Event in History 

Surrender of the German High Seas Fleet to the Allied Fleets, December 5, 1918. 

the nations allied or associated against Germany was called at 
The Peace Paris to determine the terms of p(^a{'(\ The United States, 
Conference Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan were represented at 
this meeting by five delegates each, while the smaller associated 
nations and British dominions each sent from one to three 
men. President Wilson decided to represent our country at 
the Peace Conference in person and appointed as his associates, 
Robert Lansing, his secretary of state; Edward M. House, 
Henry Wliite, and General Tasker H. Bliss. The Peace Con- 
ference was a large body, but its most important decisions 



HOW PEACE WAS MADE 



593 



were made by a Council of Four, consisting of President 
Wilson, and Prime Ministers Lloyd George of Great Britain, 
Clemenceau of France, and Orlando of Italy. 

The Peace Conference assembled in January, 1919, and 
spent about four months in drawing up terms of peace with 
Germany. At the beginning of its work the conference resolved The terms 
to include in the treaty of peace a plan for a league of nations. °^ peace 
It then decided to require Germany to return Alsace-Lorraine 
to France, to give up 
all her colonies, to rec- 
ognize the independ- 
ence of Poland and of 
the small nations into 
which Austria-Hungary 
was broken up, and to 
cede to Poland those 
parts of Prussia which 
were inhabited l)y 
Poles. Germany was 
also required to give up 
most of her shipping 
and to promise to 
build new ships for the 
Allies in order to re- 
place the merchant ves- 
sels that her submarines 
had sunk during the 
war. Moreover, she 
must pay for all the 
damage caused by her 
wanton conduct in 
Belgium, France, and 

other countries. She must agree to make a first payment of 
five billion dollars in gold on this account by 1921 and later to 
pay such further amounts as might justly be charged against 
her after investigation. In order to prevent Germany from 
again disturbing the peace of the world she was compelled to 
destroy many of her fortifications, to stop making war mater- 
ials, to abolish her old military system, and to keep on^y a few 
ships of war and a small volunteer army in future. 
38 




Leading Figures at the Peace Conference 



From left to right, President Wilson, 
Clemenceau, France; Lloyd George, 
Orlando, Italy; Marshal Foch, France. 



Premiers 
England ; 



594 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



Germany 
accepts the 
terms of the 
A.llies 



signmg 
the treaty 



Fhe 

;ovenant of 
:he league 



[ts preamble 



rhe organi- 
ation of the 
eague 



Early in May, 1919, the representatives of G(!rmany were 
invited to the Peace Conference and asked to sign the treaty 
which was handed to them. Th(!y objected to the hard but 
just conditions wliich the treaty imposed upon their country 
and spent several weeks in pleading for easier terms. Some 
minor changes were made in the treaty, and on June 16th the 
final conditions were presented to the Germans, who were told 
that if they did not accept them the Allies would i'esume oper- 
ations against their country. When faced with this possibility, 
Germany gave way and agreed to accept the terms of the 
Alhes. 

In 1870 Germany unjustly invaded France, captured 
Paris, and compelled the French to submit to humiliating terms 
of peace. On January 18, 1871, the grandfather of the German 
ruler who led his people in their wicked war of aggression in 
1914-1918 was proclaimed German Emperor in the famous 
Hall of Mirrors in the old royal palace at Versailles near Paris. 
In the same room, on June 28, 1919, the representatives of 
Germany and the members of the Peace Conference signed the 
treaty which ended the German dream of world conquest. 

The League of Nations. — One of the results of the terrible 
World War was the growth of a feeling that nations ought to 
do everything in their power to avert war in the future. This 
feeling led the Peace Conference to include in the treaty of 
peace a plan for a league of nations. The aim of the league 
is best stated in the preamble of its covenant. 

''In order to promote international cooperation and to 
achieve international peace and security by the acceptance 
of obligations not to resoi't to war, by the prescription of open, 
just, and honorable relations l:)etween nations, by the firm 
estal)hshment of the understandings of intei-national law as to 
actual rule of conduct among governments and by the main- 
tenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obliga- 
tions in the dealings "of organized peoples with one another, 
the high contracting parties agree to this covenant of the 
League of Nations." 

The (!0venant of the League of Nations provides that its 
affairs shall be managed by an assembly, a council, and a 
secretary-general. Each member of the league may send not 
more than three representatives to the assembty, but shall 



THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 595 

have only one vote in that body. The council shall consist of 
one representative each from the United States, the British 
Empire, France, Italy, and Japan, together with the representa- 
tives of four other members of the league to be designated from 
time to time by the assembly. The secretary-general is 
appointed by the council with the consent of the assembly. It 
is his duty to keep the records of the league, and for this purpose 
he shall establish a permanent office at Geneva, Switzerland, 
which is to be the capital of the league. The original members 
of the league are named in its covenant, and other specified 
states are asked to join it at once. Any state not named in 
the covenant may be admitted to the league in future by 
a two-thirds vote of the assembly. After giving two years' 
notice of its intention so to do, any state may withdraw from 
the league. 

The League of Nations undertakes to preserve the mde- 
pendence and territorial integrity of its members. It seeks to 
prevent wars in future l)y reduction of armies and navies How the 
to the lowest point consistent with national safety, and by league 
providing for the settlement of disputes between nations by prevent war 
arbitration or by conciliation. The covenant of the league 
provides for the establishment of a permanent court of inter- 
national justice, and the members of the league agree to submit 
suitable questions to arbitration and to accept and carry out 
in good faith the decisions that may be rendered. If disputes 
which they are not willing to submit to arbitration arise 
between meml^ers of the league, they agree to submit them to 
the council, which shall investigate such disputes and shall do 
everything in its power to settle them according to the prin- 
ciples of right and justice. 

If any member of the League of Nations resorts to war 
in disregard of the promises it made when it accepted the cove- 
nant of the league, it shall be deemed to have committed an What the 
act of war against all other members of the league. In such league does 
case the other membei-s agree to stop all trade and intercourse war 
with the covenant-breaking state. If the council recommends 
such action, the military and naval forces of the states in the 
league may ])e used against an offending member. The council 
may also expel from the league any member who has violated 
the covenant. 



596 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



The first draft of the covenant of the League of Nations 
was published when President Wilson came home from Paris 
in February, 1919. It was criticized in some of its details in 
our country, and after the president returned to the Peace 
Conference in March it was revised to meet these criticisms and 
particularly to safeguard our interest in the Monroe Doctrine. 
Early in July, 1919, the covenant of the league as a part of 
the treaty of peace was submitted to the Senate for ratification. 
After months of discussion, during which many objections were 

urged to the League of 
Nations, the Senate re- 
jected the treaty and re- 
turned it to the Presi- 
dent. This action de- 
layed the formal making 
of peace with Germany. 
Meanwhile ratifications 
of the treaty were ex- 
changed by the other 
allied and associated 
powers and Germany, 
and peace became effec- 
tive for all the nations 
with the exception of the 
United States, January 
10, 1920. 

The refusal of the 
Senate to approve the 
covenant of the League 
I Harris & Ewing of Natious made the 
League an issue in the 
presidential election of 1920. The Democrats advocated the 
immediate ratification of the treaty and nominated Governor 
James M. Cox of Ohio for the presidency. The Republicans 
denounced the covenant proposed by President Wilson but 
declared that they favored an agreement among nations to 
preserve the peace of the world. Upon this platform the 
Republicans named Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio as their 
candidate. The election resulted in a great victory for the 
Republicans. Harding carried thirty-seven of the forty-eight 




Warren G. Harding 



FACING THE FUTURE 



597 



states, received a popular plurality of over six million votes, 
and was elected by four hundred and four electoral votes to 
one hundred and twenty-seven cast for Cox. As a result of 
this election it seemed probable that the covenant of the League 
of Nations would be very much modified or a new agreement 
proposed by our country. The ratification of the nineteenth 
amendment to the Constitution in 1920 made the election of 




L'ndcrwuod i.t Underwood, X. 
Return of the Victorious American Armies 
Parade in New York of the famous First Division led by General Pershing. 

that year the first one in our histoiy in which the women of 
the whole country voted on the same terms as the men. 

Facing the Future. — The World War marks the end of an 
epoch in our history. The frontier which has had a profound 
influence upon American life from its beginning is gone forever. Our new 
The development of our vast natural resources has made our position of 
nation the richest in the world. We grow two-thirds of the 
world's supply of corn and cotton, and lead all other countries 
in the production of those essentials of modei'n industrial life: 
coal, petroleum, copper, and iron. For the present, at least, 
our country is the granary of the world. Men come to us 
from all lands when they desire to borrow money. We have 



598 



OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 



advanced from our former isolation to a position of leadership 
in the world. We have a great part to play in world affairs, 
and if we play it worthily our future will be even more glorious 
than our past. 

With the close of the World War our country turned to 
the work of reconstruction. Our soldiers in Europe were 
rhe tasks of brought home, the army was demobihzed, and nearly four 
)eace million men were returned to the walks of civil life. The com- 

ing of peace brought certain definite tasks. We must continue 




Viiik'Twoud cfc Underwood, A'. Y. 
The First Transatlantic Flier 
The American Seaplane NC-4, commanded by Lt. Commander A. C. Read, which flew 
from America to England via the Azores and Portugal, reaching Portugal May 27, 1919. 

to produce surplus food in vast quantities in order to help 
feed the starving millions of the Old World. The war also 
taught us the vital importance of taking prompt steps toward 
Americanizing the millions of foreigners who live among us. 

During the war the^airplane was found to be invaluable in 
military operations. When peace came, aviators promptly 
turned their attention to making air craft useful in travel and 
transportation. In less than a year after the war, men had 
flown across the Atlantic three times. The honor of making 
the first transatlantic flight belongs to Lieutenant-Commander 
Albert C. Read of the United States Navy. In May, 1919, 
with a crew of four men, he flew in a sea plane, NC-4, from 
America to England by way of the Azores Islands and Portugal. 
A month later Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur 



REFERENCES 599 

Whitten Brown of the British army made the first non-stop 
flight across the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland in 
sixteen hours. The following month a British dirigible balloon 
carrying twenty-nine men made a round trip from the British 
Islands to America and return. These air flights across the 
Atlantic suggest wonderful possibilities in the use of airships 
in the near future. 

It seems clear that in the years just ahead, our people 
must give serious attention to two important questions. The 
problem of social unrest growing out of the relations between Social and 
capital and labor is ever becoming more threatening. Democ- industrial 
racy nuist find a way to social and industrial justice. We nuist 
give ever}^ man in our country a square deal, for as Theodore 
Roosevelt once said, "Unless this country is made a good 
place for all of us to live in, it won't be a good place for any of 
us to live in." 

The development of the means of rapid travel, transpor- 
tation, and conmmnication, and the growth of commerce have 
drawn all the countries of the world closer together. The World peace 
World War has taught us that war anywhere in the world seri- 
ously concerns all the nations of the world. We must find a 
way of establishing justice between nations by peaceful means, 
for unless the world becomes a place of peace for all nations we 
cannot be sure that it will long continue a place of peace for 
any nation. 

The establishment of a square deal at home and the main- 
tenance of peace with justice throughout the world are the 
tasks which challenge us as we face the future. These are not The 
easy problems. Their solution will demand of us the high challenge of 
ideals, the devotion to duty, the self-reliant spirit, and the ® " "^^ 
dauntless courage which enabled our ancestors to dare the perils 
of the sea and to endure the hardships of the wilderness that 
they might win the land and build this nation which they are 
handing on to us. May this story of their sacrifices and their 
achievements inspire us to be worthy of them. 

REFERENCES. 

Ogg, National Progress; Davis, The Roots of the War; Tappan, The 
Little Book of the War; McMaster, The United States in the World War; 
March, History of the World War; Beamish, America's Part in the World 
War, 



600 OUR COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WAR 

TOPICAL READINGS. 

1. Neutral Rights. Ogg, National Progress, 325-343. 

2. The Approach of War. Ogg, National Progress, 384-399. 

3. We Enter the War. McMaster, The United States in the World 
War, 351-365. 

4. The President's Speech of April 2, 1917. March, History of the 
World War, 670-678. 

5. The Call to the Colors. McMaster, Tfie United States in the World 
War, 366-396. 

6. America Transformed by War. March, History of the World War, 
464-477. 

7. How Food Won the War. March, History of the World War, 
478-482. 

8. Our Navy in the War. March, History of the World War, 483-497. 

9. Ships and the Men Who Made Them. March, History of the 
World War, 520-528. 

10. Chateau-Thierry, Field of Glory. March, History of the World 
War, 545-562. 

11. The Argonne: America's Greatest Battle. Beamish, A7nerica's 
Part in the World War, 202-224. 

12. General Pershing's Own Story. March, History of the World War, 
701-719. 

ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. 

Poems: Lindsay, Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight; Seeger, I 
Have a Rendezvous with Death; Service, Carry On; Rhymes of a Red Cross 
Man; McCrae, In Flanders Fields; Begbie, Verdun; Brooke, The Soldier; 
Masters, O Glorious France. 

War Time Experiences: Thompson and Bigwood, Lest We Forget; 
Tarbell, The Rising of the Tide; Gibbons, "And They Thought We Wouldn't 
Fight"; Rinehart, Kings, Queens, and Pawns; Hay, The First Hundred 
Thousand; All in It; Dawson, Carry On; Out to Win; Living Bayonets, 

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 

1. Locate upon a map all the countries named in this chapter. 

2. Ought our country to have entered the war against Germany sooner 
than it did? Give a reason for your opinion. 

3. What lessons upon the subject of military preparedness can we 
learn- from the World War? Ought our country to require compulsory 
military training of all its young men? Why? 

4. What are the arguments in favor of a League of Nations? What 
can be said against it? 

5. What is the value of studying history? 



APPENDIX 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

In Congress July 4, 1776. 
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America. 

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to 
dissolve the political bands which have connected thena with another, and to 
assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which 
the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitles them, a decent respect to the 
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel 
them to the separation. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, 
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that 
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure 
these rights, Governments arc instituted among Men, deriving their just powers 
fioin the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government 
iMH'oines destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to 
abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such 
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most 
hkely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate 
that Governments long established should not be changed for light and tran- 
sient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are 
more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by 
abolisliing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of 
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design 
to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to 
throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. 
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the 
necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. 
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries 
and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute 
Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid 
world. 

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary 
for the public good. 

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing 
importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be 
obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. 

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts 
of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in 
the Legislature, a right inestimaljle to them and formidable to tyrants only. 

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, 
and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of 
fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. 

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with 
manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. 

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to bo 
elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have 
returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the 
meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions 
within. 

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that 
purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass 
others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new 
Appropriations of Lands. 

601 ' 



602 APPENDIX 

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent 
to Laws for cstabli.sliing Judiciary Powers. 

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their 
offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of 
Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. 

He has kept among us, in times of peace. Standing Armies without the 
Consent of our legislature. 

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the 
Civil power. 

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our 
constitution, and unacknowledged by our loss; giving his Assent to their Acts 
of pretended Legislation : 

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: 

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders 
which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: 

For cutting off our Trade with all i)arts of the world: 

For imposing Taxes on us- without our Consent: 

For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by jury: 

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: 

F'or abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, 
establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries 
so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the 
same absolute rule into these Colonies: 

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valualJe Laws, and 
altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: 

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested 
with jjower to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. 

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection 
and waging war against us. 

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and 
destroyed the lives of our people. 

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to 
comi)letc the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with 
circumstaiuos of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely parallolccl in the most barbarous 
ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. 

He has constrained our fellow-Citizens taken captive on the high Seas to 
bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends 
and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. 

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to 
bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose 
known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and 
conditions. 

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the 
most humble terms. Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by 
repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus Marked by every act 
which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free iwoiile. 

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our I^ritish brethren. We 
have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend 
an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the cir- 
cumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to 
their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties 
of our common kindred to disavow those usurpations, which would inevitably 
interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to 
the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must therefore, acquiesce in 
the necessity which denoimces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the 
rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. 

Wp:, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, 
IN General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the 
world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by authoritv of 
the good People of these Colonies, solenuily Publish and Declare, That these 
United Colonics arc, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; 



APPENDIX 



603 



♦hat they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all 
political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought 
to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they 
have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish 
Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States 
may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance 
on the protection of Divine Providence, We mutually pledge to each other our 
Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. 

SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 



N.\ME. 


Colony. 


Occupation. 


Born. 


Birthplace. 


Died. 


Age. 




Mass. . , 
Mass. . . 
N.H... 

Va 

Md... 
Md. . . 
N.J.... 

Pa 

R.I.... 
N. Y... 

Pa 

Mass. . . 

Ga 

Mass. . . 

Ga 

Va 

N.J.... 
N. C... 
S. C.... 
N. C... 
R.I . 
N.J .. 
Conn. . . 

Va 

Va 

Va 

N.Y... 
N. Y... 
S. C... 
Del ... 

s. c... 

N.Y... 

Pa 

Pa 

Va 

Md.... 
Mass.. . 
N. C... 
Del... 
Del... 

Pa 

Pa 

S. C... 
Conn... 

Pa 

N.J.... 
Md.... 

Pa 

N.H... 

Ga 

Conn . . . 
Conn. . . 

Pa 

N. J... 
Conn . . . 
Va 


Lawyer 

Merchant 

Physician 

Planter 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

Merchant 

Lawyer 

Farmer 

Printer 

Merchant 

Merchant 

Merchant 

Physician 

Farmer 

Farmer 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

Farmer 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

Soldier 

Farmer 

Merchant 

Merchant 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

Farmer 

Merchant 

Surveyor 

Statesman. . . . 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

General 

Lawyer 

Physician 

Lawyer 

Shoemaker ... 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

Lawyer 

Physician 

Physician 

Lawyer 

Sailor 

Statesman .... 

Lawyer 

Minister 

Physician 

Lawyer 


1735 
1722 
1729 
1730 
1737 
1741 
1726 
1739 
1727 
1734 
1706 
1744 
1732 
1737 
1731 
1740 
1715 
1730 
1746 
1742 
1707 
1737 
1732 
1743 
1732 
1734 
1713 
1716 
1749 
1734 
1743 
1726 
1734 
1724 
1738 
1740 
1731 
1741 
1734 
1730 
17.30 
1745 
1749 
1721 
1710 
17.30 
1742 
1716 
1714 
1740 
1730 
1731 
1742 
1722 
1726 
1726 


Braintree, Mass 


1826 
1803 
1795 
1797 
1832 
1811 
1794 
1813 
1820 
1821 
1790 
1814 
1777 
1793 
1784 
1791 
1780 
1779 
1809 
1790 
1785 
1791 
1796 
1826 
1794 
1797 
1803 
1778 
1779 
1817 
1788 
1798 
1806 
1777 
1789 
1799 
1814 
1788 
1798 
1783 
1779 
1813 
1800 
1793 
1806 
1781 
1787 
1781 
1803 
1804 
1785 
1811 
1798 
1794 
1797 
1806 


9? 






81 






67 




Newington, Va 

Annapolis, Md 


62 




96 




Somerset Co., Md 


71 




Elizabethtown, N.J 

Philadelphia, Pa . . 


69 




75 


Ellerv, William 


Newport, R. I 

Setauket, N. Y 

Boston, Mass. . .• 


93 


Floyd, William... 


87 
85 




Marblehead, Mass ' . . . 


71 


Gwinnett, Button 


England 


45 


Hancock, John 


Braintree, Mass 


57 




Connecticut 


53 




Berkeley, Va 


51 


Hart, John 

Hewes, Joseph 

Heyward. Thomas, Jr 

Hooper, William 


Hopewell, N. J 

Kingston, N. J 

St. Luke'.s.S.C 

Boston, Mass 


65 
49 
63 
49 




Scituate, Mass 


79 




Philadelphia, Pa 


,54 


Huntington, Samuel 


Windham, Comi 


64 


Jefferson, Thomas 


Shadwell, Va 


83 




Stratford, Va 


63 


Lee, Francis Lightfoot 


Stratford, Va 


63 


Lewis, Francis 


Llandaff, Wales 


91 


Livingston, Philip 


.\lbai)y, N. Y 


63 


Lynch, Thomas, Jr 

McKean, Thomas 


Prince George's Co., .S. C, . 
New London, Pa .... 


30 

84 


Middleton, Arthur 

Morris, Lewis .... 


Middleton PI., S. C 

Morrisania, N Y 


44 

T?. 




Lancashire, England 

Ridlev, Pa, 


73 


Morton, John 


53 


Nelson, Thomas, Jr 


York, Va 


51 


Paca, William . .... 


Wye Hall, Md 


.59 


Paine, Robert Treat 


Boston, Mass . . 


84 


Penn, John 


Caroline Co., Va 


48 


Read, George 


Cecil Co., Md 


64 


Rodney, Csesar 


Dover, Del.. 


.5,3 




New Castle, Del .... 


49 




Berberry, Pa 


68 


Rutledge, Edward 


Charleston, S. C 

Newton, Mass 


51 

73 


Smith, James 


Ireland . 


96 


Stockton, Richard 


Princeton, N. J 

Point oin Manor, Md 

Ireland 


51 
45 


Tavlor, George 


65 


Thornton, Matthew 


Ireland 


89 




Frederick Co., Va 


64 


Whipple, William 


55 


Williams, William 


Lebanon, Conn 

St. Andrews, Scotland 

Yester, Scotland 

Windsor, Conn 

Elizabeth Co., Va 


81 
56 


Witherspoon, John 

Wolcott, Oliver 


73 

72 




80 





WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS 

Extracts from His Address Counselling the Maintenance of the Union. — Con- 
finement of the General Government to its Constitutional Limitations, 
and Avoidance of Relations with Foreign Political Affairs. 

To THE People of the United States on His Approaching Retire- 
ment FROM the Presidency. 

Here, perhaps, I ought to stop; but a solicitude for your welfare, which 
cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger natural to that 
solicitude, urge me, on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn 
contemplation, and to rcroninirnd to your frequent review some sentiments, 
which are the result of mucli reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and 
which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a 
people. These will be afforded to you with the more freedom, as you can only 
see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly 
have no personal motive to bias his counsel; nor can I forget, as an encourage- 
ment, to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiments on a former and not 
dissimilar occasion. 

Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no 
recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment. 

Preservation of the Union. 

The unity of government, which constitutes you one people, is also now 
dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real 
independence — the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of 
your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. 
But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, 
much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the 
conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against 
which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly 
and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed — it is of infinite 
moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national 
union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a 
cordial, habitual and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to 
think and speak of it as the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; 
watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever 
may suggest even a suspicion that it can, in any event, be abandoned; and 
indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any 
portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now 
link together the various parts. 

For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens 
by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate 
your affections. The name of America, which belongs to you in your national 
capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appella- 
tion derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of differences, you 
have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have, 
in a common cause, fought and triumphed together; the independence and 
liberty you posfsess are the work of joint counsels and joint efforts, of common 
dangers, sufferings, and successes. 

Encroachments by the Government. 
It is important, likewise, that the luil)its of thinking, in a free country' 
should inspire caution in those intrusted with its administration, to confine 
themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the 
exercise of the powers of one department, to encroach upon another. The 
spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments 
in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. 

604 



APPENDIX 605 

A just estimate of that love of power, and proneiiess to abuse it which pre- 
douiinates iu the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this 
position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, 
by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each 
the guardian of the public weal, against invasions by the others, has been 
evinced by experiments, ancient and modern ; some of them in our own country 
and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute 
them. If, in the opinion of the [people, the distribution or modification of the 
constitutional powers Ix', in aiij- paitiiular, wrong, let it be corrected by an 
amendment in the way which the ( 'onstitution designates. But let there be no 
change or usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of 
good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. 
The precedent must always overbalance, in permanent evil, any partial 
oi transient benefit, which the use can, at any time yield. 

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations; cultivate peace and 
harmony with all; religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be 
that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, en- 
lightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the 
magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted 
justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the cour.se of times and things, 
the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which 
might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be that Providence has not 
connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its \-irtue? The experiment, 
at least, is recommended by every .sentiment which ennobles human nature. 
Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices? 

Entanglements with Foreign Powers. 

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, 
fellow-citizens) the jealouisy of a free people ought to constantly awake; since 
history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful 
foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful, nmst be im- 
partial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, 
instead of a defense against it. Exces.sive partiality for one foreign nation, and 
excessive dislike for another, cause those whom they actuate to see danger only 
on one side, and serve to veil, and even second, 'the arts of influence on the other. 
Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become 
suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and con- 
fidence of the people, to surrender their interests. 

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extend- 
ing our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as 
possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them he fulfilled 
with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. 

Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very 
remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the 
causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it 
must be unwise in us to implicate our.sclves by artificial ties, in the ordinary 
\icissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her 
friendships or enmities. 

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a 
different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the 
period is not far ofT when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; 
when we may take such an attitude as will cavi.se the neutrality we may at any 
time resolve upon, to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, 
under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard 
the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, 
guided by justice, shall counsel. 

Parting Counsels. 

In offering to you, my countrymen, these coimsels of an old and affectionate 
friend, I dare not hope that they will make the strong and lasting impression 
I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passion,', or prevent 
our nation from running the course which hitherto has marked the destiny of 



606 APPENDIX 

nations; but if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some 
partial benefit; some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to 
moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign 
intrigues, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope 
will be full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare by which they have 
been dictated. 

Unit£d States, September 17, 1796. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG SPEECH 

Address at the Dedication of Gettysburg Cemetery, November 19, 1863. 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this conti- 
nent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that 
all men are created ecjual. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or 
any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a 
great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final 
resting-place of those who hero»gave their lives that that nation might live. It 
is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 
hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have 
consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note 
nor long remember what we say here but it can never forget what they did here. 
It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that 
they have thus far so nob'.y carried on. • It is rather for us to be here dedicated 
to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take 
increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure 
of devotion; that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in 
vain; that the nation shall under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that 
government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish 
from the earth. 

THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

"The Monroe doctrine" was enunciated in the following words in President 
Monroe's message to Congress, December 2, 1S23: 

" In the discu,ssions to which this interest has given rise, and in the arrange- 
ments by which they may terminate, the occasion has been deemed proper for 
asserting, as a principle in which rights and interests of the United States are 
involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition 
which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as 
subjects for future colonization by any European power. . . . We owe it, 
therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United 
States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on 
their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous 
to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any 
European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the 
governments who have declared their independence and maintain it, and whose 
independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowl- 
edged, we could not view any interposition for the puriwse of oppressing them 
or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any Europeon power in any 
other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the 
United States," 



PRESIDENTS AND VICE-PRESIDENTS 
OF THE UNITED STATES 



President. 


State. 


Term of Office. 


Elected by 


Vice-President. 


George Washington 

John Adams 




1789-1797 


Whole People. . . . 




Massachusetts. . 


1797-1801 


Federalists 


Thomas Jefferson 


Thomas Jefferson 


Virginia 


1801-1809 


Republicans' . .. <. 


Aaron Burr 
George CHnton 




Virginia 

\'irginia 


1809-1817 


Republicans' . . . i 
Republicans' 


George Clinton 


James Monroe 


1817-1825 


Elbridge Gerry 
Daniel D. Tompkins 


John Quincy Adams 


Massachusetts . . . 


1825-1829 


Republicans' 


John C. Calhoun 


Andrew Jackson 


Tennessee 


1829-1837 


Democrats < 


John C. Calhoun 
Martin Van Buren 


Martin Van Buren 


New York 


18.37-1841 


Democrats 


Richard M. Johnson 




Ohio 


1841 


Whigs 


John Tyler 






1841-1845 


Whigs 




James K. Polk 


Tennessee 


1845-1849 


Democrats 


George M. Dallas 


Zaehary Taylor- 


Louisiana 


1849-1850 


Whigs 


Millard Fillmore 


Millard Fillmore' 


New York 


18.50-1853 


Whigs 






New Hampshire 
Pennsylvania 


1853-1857 






James Buchanan 


1857-1861 


Democrats 


John C. Breckenridge 


Abraham Lincoln' 


Illinois 


1861-1865 


Republicans . . < 


Hannilial Hamlin 
Anthew Johnson 


Andrew Johnson' 


Tennessee 


1865-1869 


Republicans 




Ulysses S. Grant 


Illinois 


1869-1877 


Republicans . . . < 


Schuyler Colfax 
Henry Wilson 


Rutherford B. Hayes . . 


Ohio 


1877-1881 


Republicans 


William A. Wheeler 


James A. Garfield- 


Ohio 


1881 


Republicans 


Chester A. Arthur 


Chester A. Arthur' 


New York 


1881-1885 


Republicans 




Grover Cleveland 


New York 


1885-1889 


Democrats 


Thomas A. Hendricks 


Benjamin Harrison 


Indiana 


1889-1893 


Republicans. . . . 


Levi P. Morton 


Grover Cleveland 


New York 


1893-1897 


Democrats 


Adiai E. Stevenson 


William McKinley- . 


Ohio 


1897-1901 


Republicans. . < 


Garrett A. Hobart 
Theodore Roosevelt 


Theodore Roosevelt' . . 


New York 


1901-1909 


Republicans ... 


Charles W. Fairbanks 


William H. Taft 


Ohio 


1909-1913 


Republicans. . 


James S. Sherman 


Woodrow Wilson 


New Jersey 


1913-1921 


Democrats 


Thomas R. Marshall 


Warren G. Harding 


Ohio 


1921- 


Republicans 


Calvin Coolidge 



' Not the present Republican Party. 

2 Died in office. 

' Vice-Presidents who succeeded to the Presidency. 



607 



INDEX 



Key to Pronunciation 

ate, senate, rare, cat, local, f iir. ask, parade ; scene, event, edge, novel, refer ; right, sin ; 
cold, 6bey, cord, stop, compare; unit, unite, burn, cut, focus, menii: boot, fSot; found; 
boil; function; chase; good; joy; then, thick; hw = wh as in when; zh = z as in 
azure; kh = ch as in loch. 



A 



Abbey (ab'I), Edwin A., 539 
Acadia (d-ka'dl-d), S8, 99 
Adams (ad'dmz). John, 123, 130, 134, 13.5, 
152, 166, 184, 196, 202, 217, 219. 221 

administration of, 211-215 

character of, 211 

portrait of, 210 
Adams, John Quinzy (kwln'zi), 252, 316- 
318, 351, 3.59 

portrait of, 317 
Adams, Samuel, 114-116, 118. 120, 122, 

123, 128, 130. 154, 166. 169 
Africa (af'ri-kd), .52 
Agriculture, in the colonies, 49-51 

in the early republic, 255, 261-262 

changes in, 289-291 

rapid growth of, 386 

in the New South, 460-462 

use of machines in, 471-472, 482-485 

on a large scale, 497-499 
Aguinaldo (a"ge-nal'do), Emilio, 562 
Alabama (al'd-bii'md), 303, 304, 308, 309, 

40t, 488 
Alabama, the, 412, 467 
Alabama Claims, 468-469 
Alamo (a'la-mo) . the, 358 
Alaska (d-liis'kd), 467, ,521 
Albany (61'bd-nl). 30, 286 
Albany Plan of Union, 101, 1.59 
Albemarle Sound (al'be-miirl), 33 
Alcock (ol'kok). Captain John, 597-598 
Alexandria (al"eg-zan'drl-d), 5 
Algonquins (al-goh'kl-anz), 46, 88 
Alien and Sedition Acts, 214, 217 
Alleghany Mountains (al'e-ga'nl), 45, 65, 
93. 99, 108, 1,30. 176. 184, 188, 193, 221 
Allegheny River, 100, 278 
Allen (al'en), Ethan, 132 
Alliance, French, 144, 146 147 
Alsace-Lorraine (al-sas=16-ran'), 593 
Amendments to the Constitution, 168, 
170, 173 

twelfth, 217-218 

thirteenth. 44.5-446 

fourteenth. 454-455 

fifteenth, 455 

seventeenth, 528 

eighteenth, 536 

nineteenth, 528-9 
America (d-mer'i-kd) , 2, 4, 18 

discovery of, 7-9 

new British policy in, 109-111 

British troops in, 117-119 
American Antislavery Society, 34G-347 



American Colonization Society, 346 
American Federation of Labor, 511 
Americanization, 542-553, 597 

influences promoting, 551-553 
American Party. 385, 394 
Americans, 71 

the making of, 542, 543 
Amherst (am 'erst). Baron Jellrev, General, 

102, 103, 109 
Amusements, colonial. 77 
Anderson (an'der-sen), Major Robert, 408 
Andros (an'dros). Sir Edmund. 56 
Annapolis (a-nap'o-lls). Convention at, 

164-165 
Antietam (an-te'tam), battle of, 415 
Anti-Federalists, 168 
Antioch (antl-6k), 5 
Antislavery Movement, 346-352 
Apaches (a-pa'chaz), .501 
Appalachian mountain system (ap"d- 

lach'I-an), 44, 69, 99, 221, 488 
influence of, 44-45, 298-299 
Appomattox Com-t House (ap"o-mat'uks), 

surrender at, 432 
Arabs (ar'abz), 4 
Arbitration, 468-469, 557, 595 
Architecture, 540 
Arizona (ar-l-z6'nd) , 368, .503 
Arkansas (iir'kdn-so), 309, 408, 417 
Arkansas River, 91, 227 
Arkwright (iirk-rit), Richard, 274 
Armenians (ar-me'ni-anz) , 546 
Annistead (arm'i-sted). Gen. Lewis Ad- 
dison, 424 
Arnold (iir'nuld). Gen. Benedict. 132, 133 

treason of, 145 
Arthur (iir'thur), Chester A., 507 

portrait of, 507 
Asia (a'shd), 4-5, 7, 8 
Asia Minor (a'shd mi'ner), 5 
Association, American, 123-124 
Astor (as'ter), .John Jacob, 228 
Astoria (as-to'ri-d). 228 
Atlanta (at-lan'td), campaign against, 427 

growth of, 463 
Atlantic seaboard (at-lan'tik) , 45, 93, 99, 

176 
resources of, 69-70 
Austerlitz (ous'ter-llts) , 234 
Austin (os'tin), Moses, 357 
Austin. Stephen P., 357 
Austria (6s'trl-d), 223, 233-234, 251, 573 
Austrians (os'trl-anz) , 205, 223, 575, 576, 

588 
Aviation, (a''vl-a'shiin) , development of, 

597-598 



609 



610 



INDEX 



Bacon (ba'kn), Nathaniel, 55-56 
Bacon's Rebellion, 5.5-56 
Bahamas (bd-ha'mdz), 8 
Bainbridge (ban'brlj). Commodore Wil- 
liam, 245 
Baker (ba'ker). Col. E. D., Representative 

from Illinois, 376 
Balboa (bal-bo'd), 9 
Balfour (bal'foor), Arthur J., 580 
Baltic Sea (bol'tlk), 38 
Baltimore (bol'tl-mor), 247, 257, 286 
Baltimore, Cecil Calvert, Lord, 23, 39 
Bank, first United States, 201, 249 
second United States, 249 
Jackson's attack upon, 326-327 
Banks (banks), Nathaniel P., General, 413 
Baptists (bap'tists), 83 
Barbary Pirates (bar'bd-rl), 244 
Barre (ba"ra'). Isaac. Ill 
Beauregard (bo're-gard). General P. G. T., 

412 
Beecher (be'cher), Henry Ward, 382 
Belgium (bel'jl-um), 573, 574 
Bell (bel), Alexander Graham, 475 
BeU, John. 402 
Belleau Wood (bel-lo'), 5S6 
Bennington (ben'ing-tiin) , battle of, 143 
Berkeley (bilrk'll). Sir William, Governor, 

55-56 
opposes free schools, 80 
Berkeley, Lord John, 34 
Bill of Rights, 168 
Bird Woman, 227 

Birmingham (blr'mlng-dm), Alabama, 463 
Birney (bur'nl), James G., 347-348 
Bismarck (bls'miirk), North Dakota, 227 
Black Hawk War, 331 
Black Hills, 491 
Black Sea, 5 

Blaine (blan), James G., 506, 507, 555 
Bland- Allison Act (bland=al'I-siin), 618- 

519 
Bliss (bUs), General Tasker H., 592 
Blockade, the, 410, 428-429 
Blue Ridge Mountains, 44, 130 
Bolivar (bo-le'var), Simon, 251 
Bonhomyne Richard (bo-nom re"shar'). the, 

148-149 
Boone (boon), Daniel, 177-179, 193, 296, 

301, 488 
portrait of, 178 
Boonesborough (boons'bur-6), 179, 181, 

182 
Booth (booth), John Wilkes, 448 
Border Warfare, 95-98, 102 
"Bosses", party, 527-.52S 
Bo.ston (bos'tun), 26, 43, .56, 73, 78,124, 2.57 

siege of, 129, 132 
Boston Mas.sacre, llS-119 
Boston Port Bill, 121 
Boston Tea Party, 120 121 
Boundaries, settlement of, 250-251 
Braddock (brad'6k). Expedition of, 101- 

102 
Bragg (brag), G(?n(!ral Braxton, 420, 426 
Brandywine (brau'dl-win"), battle of, 142 
Brazil (brd-zil'), 10 11 
Brockenridge (br6k'ln-rlj), .John C. 402 
British Columbia (brlt'Ishsko-liim'bl-d), 

363 
Brooks (br65ks), Preston S., 393 



Brown (broun), Lieut. Arthur Whitton, 

597-598 
Brown, Jacob, 242 
Brown, John, 393, 400-401 
Brown University, 82 
Bryan (bri'dn), William J., 519-520, 521, 

524 
portrait of, 519 
Bryant (bri'dnt), William CuUen, 269, 

332. 388 
Bryn Mawr (brin mar), Pennsylvania. 65 
Buchanan (bu-kan'dn), James, 394-395, 

396, 404 
portrait of, 395 
Buell (bQ'el). General Don Carlos. 417- 

418, 419. 420 
Buffalo (biif'd-lo). New York, 312 
Buffalo, the, 493 
Bulgaria (bool-ga'ri-d), 573, 588 
Bull Run, flr.«t battle of, 412 

second battle of. 415 
Bunker Hill (bunk'or), battle of, 131-132 
Bureau of American Republics, 550 
Burgesses, House of, 23 
Burgoyne (l)ur-goin'). General John, 141, 

246 
his campaign in New York, 142-143 
Burke (bilrk). Edmund, 121 
Burns (burnz), Anthony, 383 
Burnside (bilrn'sid), General Ambrose E., 

415, 416 
Burr (bur), Aaron, 217 

plot of, 228-230 
Butler (biit'ler), Senator Andrew P., 370 
Butte (but), Montana, 491 



C 



Cabinet, 196-198 

Cabot (ka'bot), John, 15 

Calhoun (kal-hoon'), John C, 2.38. 249, 

283, 2,S4, 316, 317, 323-324, 3.50, 359, 

378-379, 401. 
picture of, 238 
Calicut (kal'i-kat), 6 
California (ka"ll-f6r'nl-d), 15, 252, 363- 

365, 366. 367, 368, 374, 380, 384, 474, 

489, 492, 498 
the rush to, 369-371 
Cambridge (kam'brlj), Massachusetts 

(nias"d-choo'sets), 82 
Camdi!ii (kam'den), battle of, 151 
Canada (kan'd-dd), 91, 94, 98, 99, 108, 

117, 118. 122. 1.52. 557 
invasion of, 1775. 132-133 
efforts to invade in War of 1812, 240- 

243 
Canals, 2.S3-286_ 
('antigny (kan'te'ne"). 586 
(^ape Breton Island (bret'un), 98 
Clape of Good Hope, 6, 0, 15 
Cape Nome (nom), 491, .521 
Cape Verde Islands (vfird), 10 
Capital. 293 

C^aribljean Sea (kar'I-be'an) . 12 
Carlisle (kar-lTl'). Pennsylvania (p§n"sn- 

va'nl-d). Indian School at, 502 
Carolina (ka'ro-li'nd), .33, 42, 44, 46, 49, 

63, 65, 137, 1,50, 184 
Carpenter's Hall (kar'pen-ters), 123 
Carpc^tbaggers. 457-460 
evils of their rule. 457-459 
their downfall, 459^60 



INDEX 



611 



Carranza (ka-r;in'za), Vonustiano, 570, 

571 
Carson (kiir'sun), Christopher, ("Kit"), 

304 
Carteret (kiir'ter-et) , Sir George, 34 
Cartier (kiir'tya), Jacques, 87 
Cartwriffht (kiirfrlt), Edward, 274 
Cass (kas), Lewis, 375 
Cathay (kd-tha'). 5 
Catholics (kath'o-llks) , 14. 17, 24, 39, 65, 

83, 85, 95, 334 
Cattle ranches, 493-495 
Cavaliers (kav'^-lers'), 32, 39 
Cayngas (ka-yoo'gnz), 4(5 
Cedar Creek (se'der), battle of, 431 
Central America, 8, 13 
Cervera (ther-va'ra), Admiral Pascual, 

559 
Chambersburg (cham'berz-burg) , 422 
Champlain (sham-plan'), Samuel de, 87-89 

portrait of, 89 
Chancellorsville (chan'sel-erz-vil), battle 

of, 416 
Charles I (charlz), 25-26, 32. 39, 107 
Charles 11, 32, 34, 36, 42 
(Charleston (chiirlz'tun), 33, 43, 120, 147, 

149, 151, 153, 207, 257, 286-287 
Charter Oak (char'ter), 56 
C'hase (chas), Salmon P., 378, 391, 394, 

446, 457 
Chateau-Thierry (sha'to'tya're') . 586 
("■hattanooga (chaf'd-noo'gd) , 417, 420, 
425, 463 

battle of, 426^27 
Cherokees (cher'6-kez) , 46, 180-181, 189 
C^herr.v Valley (cher'i val'I), 181 
Chesapeake (ches'd-pek), 235-236, 240, 245 
Chesapeake Bay, 23, 141. 151. 247 
Chicago (she-ka'go). 2. 312. 495 
Chickamauga (chlk-d-mo'gd), battle of. 

426 
China (chl'nd). "open door" in, 563-565 

Boxer uprising m, 564 
Chinese (chi-nez'). Exclusion of, 549-550 
Chippewa (chip'e-wa), 242 
Choctaws (chok'toz), 332 
Chowan River (shoo'an), 33 
Christiana (Pa.) riot (kns-chan'd), 383 
Christian Commission, 437 
Churches, in the colonies, 83-85 

on the frontier, 308 
Church of England (In'gland), 24-25 
Cincinnati (sin-sln-a'tl), 311 
Cities, growth of, 292 

in the West, 309-312 

government of, 529 
Civil Rights Bill. 4.54. 456 
Civil Service Commission, .527 
Civil Service Reform, 527 
Civil War, 407-432 

life during the, 43.5-440 

finances of the. 440-443 

home-coming of the .soldiers. 451-4.52 
Clark (kliirk). George Rogers, 1S2-1,S4, 

185. I.SS. 296 
Clark. William, 226 

('lay (kla), Henry, 238-239, 241, 249. 283. 
316-318, 326, 327, 329, 301-362, 377- 
378 

picture of, 238 
Clayton Anti-Tru.st Actjkla'tun), 531 
(^lemenceau (kla"miiri"so') • Georges, 593 



Clemens (klem'enz), Samuel L., see Mark 

Twain. 
Clermont (kler'mont). 280 
Cleveland (klev'land), Ohio (5-hi'5), 312 
Cleveland, Grover. .507-508, 513-514, 519, 
.527. .534. ,5.56 

portrait of, 513 
Climate, influence of, 71 
C^linton (klln'tiln), DeWitt, 284-285 
Clive (kllv), Robert. 109 
(;;lothing. of the colonists. 73-74 
Coal. 279. 386 

Cody (k5'dl). William F.. 492 
Coinage, history of. 517-520 
Cold Harbor (kold har'ber). battle of. 

430 
Colleges, colonial. 82 
Colombia (ko-16m'bI-a), 560 
Colonies, and the Mother Country, 57-59 

rivers of, 70 

mineral wealth of, 70 

game. fiu-. and fish in. 70-71 

French and English contrasted. 93-95 

unrest in. 1 11-125 

growth of Union in, 121-124 
Colonists, motives of, 37-40 

hardships of, 42-43 

relations with the Indians, 45-49 

what they brought from Europe. 05-69 

what they found in America, 69-71 

homes of. 71-75 

social life of. 75-78 

schools of. 78-83 

religious life of, 83-85 
Colorado (kol-o-ra'do), 385, 491, .502, .528 
Columbia River (ko-liim'bl-d). 227. 228 
('olumbia University. 82 
Columbus (ko-lfim'bus). Christopher. 

6-8. 45 
('omanches (ko-man'ches). 501 
Commerce, colonial. 57-59 

under the Confederation. 163-164 

rapid growth of. 263-264 

regulation of. 530 
Commerce and Labor. Department of. 

531 
Committees of Correspondence. 122-123 
"Common Sense", 133-134 
Commons, House of, 109, 110, 111, 113 
Compromise, in the Constitution, 166-167 
Compromise of 1850, 377-381 

terms of, 380-381 
Concord (kon'kord), flght at, 128-129 
Confederate States of America, 403-404, 
408 

finances of, 443 
Confederation. Articles of. 160-101, 173 

nature of, 161 

critical years under, 161-164 
Congregational Church, 83, 270 
C!ongress, Albany, 101, 122. 1.59 

Stamp Act. 112-113. 122. 159 

First Continental. 123-124. 159 

Second Continental. 130. 159-160 

of the United States. 1 09- 171, 196 
Congressional Caucus, 322 
( Congressional reconstruction, 455 
Connecticut (k6n-net'I-kut) , 28-29, 43, 48, 

55, .56. 124. 129. 157. 184. 185 
Connecticut River. 28, 29, 31, 32, 44, 96 
Conservation. 532-534 
Conservatives. 529 
Constantinople (kon'stan-tl-no'pl) , 5 



612 



INDEX 



Cov-itUuHon 244. 245 

Constitution defined, 158 

Constitution of the United States, 164-173 

its formation, 164-167 

its ratification, 167-169 

its contents, 169-173 

source»s of, 167 

objections to, 168 

amendments.ito, 168, 170, 173 

preamble of, 169 

the supreme law of the land, 173 

construction of, 203 204 
Constitutions of the States, 157-158 
Constitutional Union Party, 402-403 
Convention, the Constitutional, 164-167 

origin of, 164-165 

membership of, 165-166 

difficulties confronting, 166 

plans and compromises in the, 166-167 
Conventions, national, 322-323 
Cooke (kook). Jay and Co.. 478 
Cooper (koop'er), James Penimore, 269 
Copley (kop'li), John Singleton, 269 
Corinth (kor'inth), Mississippi (mls"ls- 

slp'pl), 417, 419 
ComwallLs (korn-wal'is) Lord Charles. 

General, 141, 151 
Coronado {k6r"6-na'do). 11 
Cortes (kor'tas'). Hernando, 10 
Cotton, 277 
Cotton gin, 275-276. 277-278, 292-293, 

338 
Country, in the South, 53-54 

in the West, 307 
Courts, in the colonies, 56-57 

of the United States, 172, 198 
Cowboys, 494-495 
Cowpens (kou'penz"), battle of, 151 
Crawford (kro'ferd), F. Marion, 539 
Crawford, William H., 316, 317 
Creeks (kreks), 46, 247, 332 
Crockett (krok'et), David, 357, 358 
Crompton (kromp'tian). Samuel, 274 
Cromwell (krom'wel), Oliver. 32 
Crown Point (kroun point), 100, 103 
Crusades, 4-5 
Cuba (ku'bri), 8, 10. 391, .560 

revolutions in, 557-558 

fighting in, .559-560 

our relations with. 561 
Cumberland (kum'ber-land), 100 
Cumberland Gap, 178 
Cumberland River, 180 
•'Cuml)erland Road", 284 
Cumberland Valley, 44 
Custer (kus'ter), General George A., 501 



D 



Daboll's "Arithmetic", 267 

Dakota (dd-ko'td), 2 

Dale (dal), Governor Thomas, 21 

Danube (dan'ub), 3 

Dark Age, 3-4 

Dartmouth College (diirt'mflth), 82 

Davis (da'vis), Jefferson, 376, 378, 401, 
404 

Davis, .John, 16 

Debt, national. 198-201, 331 

Debts of the States, 200 

Decatur (de-ka'ter), Stephen, Commo- 
dore, 24.") 

Declaration of Independence, 133-136, 137 



Deerfleld (der'feld), attacked by Indians, 

96-98 
Delaware (del'd-war), 63, 168, 185, 408 
Delaware, Thomas West, Lord. 21 
Delaware River, 31, 36, 42, 63, 66, 78, 

140, 279 
Democracy, triumph of, 217-219 
leader of, 219-221 
principles of, 220 
growth of, 269-271 
rising tide of, 330-331 
Democratic-Republicans, 202-204 
Democrats, 318, 328-329, 361-362, 375. 

381-382, 391, 394, 395, 402-403 
Denmark (den'mark) 561 
Denver (den'ver), 491, 492 
Desert, Great American, 489 
De Soto (de so'to), 11 
Detroit (de-troif), 117, 163. 177. 182, 183, 

241, 242, 312 
Dewey (du'I), George, 558-559 
Diaz (de-az'K Porflrio, 569 
Dickinson (dik'In-sun) , John, 112. 114, 

116, 123, 130, 154, 160, 165 
portrait of, 153 
Dinwiddle, Governor of Virginia (dln- 

wld'I), 100 
Direct primarias, 527, .528 
District of Columbia (ko-lum'bl-d) , 200. 

374, 381 
Dorchester Heights (dor'ches-ter) , 132 
Douglas (dug'lds), Stephen A., 390-391. 

396-399, 401. 402 
Dover (do'ver), 28 
Drafting, in the Civil War. 435-436 

in the World War, 582 
Draft riot._436 

Drake (drak), Francis, 15, 17 
Dred Scott Decision, 39,5-396 
Dunmore's War (dun'mor), 180. 
Dutch (duch), 34. 42, 49. 63, 65-66, 79, 

297. 542 
in America, 30-32 



E 



Early (er'll), General, 430, 431 

Edison (ed'I-siin). Thomas A., 475. 
portrait of. 476 

Education, in the colonies. 78-83 
in the early republic, 266-268 
progr&ss in, 332, 388 
in the New South, 463 
progress in, 536-537 

Edwards (ed'wdrds), Jonathan, 83 

El Caney (el ka'ni) , 560 

Elections, presidential, (1789) 196, (1796) 
211, (1800) 214, 217, (1804) 217, 
(1820) 217, (1824) 317-318, (1828) 
318, (18.32) 327, (1836) 328-329, 
(1840) 329-330, (1844) 361-363, 
(1848) 375, (1852) 381-382, (1856) 
394-395, (1860) 401-403, (1864) 
446-447, (1868) 464-465, (1872) 465, 
(1S76) (465-466, (1880) .506, (1884) 
.507, (18S8) .508, (1892) .508, (1896) 
.525, (1900) 521, (1904) .525, (1908) 
.525, (1912) 525-526, (1916) 526 

Electoral Commission, 466 

Electricity, 475-476 

Elizabeth (S-liz'd-beth) , Queen, 15, 24, 25 

Elk River, 141 

Ellsworth (glz'wflrth), Oliver, 165 



INDEX 



613 



Emancipation Proclamation, 444-445 

Embargo Act, 236, 275, 281 

Emorson (em'er-sun), Kalph Waldo, 129, 

332-.333, 382, 388, 401, 440, 539 
Emigrant Aid Society, 392 
Eiidicott (en'dl-kot), John, 26 
EiiKiiieerinK. 540 

England (In'gland), 4, 62, 87, 152. 163. 
205, 206, 223, 224, 2.52, 466 

rivalry with Spain, 1.5-18 

rivalry with France. 87-105 

American attachment to, 108-109 

fails to keep settlers out of the West, 177 

trouble with, 208 

Jay Treaty with, 208 

tramples on our rights on the sea, 233- 
237 

Industrial Revolution in, 273-277 

Parliamentary reform in, 330 

attitude of during our Civil War, 410, 
445 

in the World War, 573 
English (in'glfeh), 34, 57, 62-63, 65, 66, 
193, 541. 580 

ideas of government and law, 68-69 

contrasted with French, 93-95 
Episcopalians. 83, 270 
Era of Good Feeling. 316-317 
Erics.son (er'Ik-sfln), John, 411 
Erie (e'rl), 242 
Erie Canal, 284-285, 288 
Essex (es'eks), 245 
Europeans (u"r6-pe'anz) who became 

Colonists. 62-65 
Evans (ev'anz), Oliver, 286 
Excise, 199 



P 



Faetory system, 275 

influence of, 291-294 
Fairfield (far'feld), 147 
Falmouth (fal'muth), 147 
Farming, .see Agriculture 
Farm machinery, 290, 471-472 
Farragut (far'd-gut), David G., 418-419, 

427-428 
"Federal Reserve" banks, 532 
"Federalist", The, 168 
Federalists, 168, 202-204, 217, 218, 238, 
316 

fall of, 213-215 

our debt to. 214-215 
Ferdinand (fur'dl-nand) V, King of Spain, 

7. 8 
Field (feld). Cyrus _W., 475 
Filipinos (fIl"i-pe'noz). 562-563 
Fillmore (fll'mor), Millard. 380, 395 

portrait of, 381 
Financial troubles under the Confeder- 
ation. 161-163 
Fine Arts. 539 
Fiske (ffek), John, 539 

portrait of, 538 
Pismes (fern), 587 
Fitch (fich), John, 279-280 
Five Intolerable Acts, 121, 123 
Five Nations. The, 46 

Florida (flor'I-dd). 11. 104, 152, 230, 362. 
403, 461, 465. 466 

acquired by United States, 250-251 

West, 229, 251 



Foch (fosh). Ferdinand, Marshal, 585. 

587, 588 
Food, of the colonists, 74 
Poote (foot). Commodore, 417 
Forbes (forbz). General, 102 
Forest reserves, 534 
Fort Donelson (don'el-sun), 416-417 
Fort Duquesne (d(56-kan'), 100, 101, 102 
Fort Frontenac (fron'te-nak), 100, 102 
Port Henry (hen'ri), 416-417 
Fort Lee (le), 139 
Fort McHenry (mak-hen'rl) , 247 
Fort Moultrie (moo'tri, mool'tri), 147 
Port Nassau (nas'6), 30 
Port Necessity (ne-ses'I-tl) , 101 
Fort Niagara (nl-ag'd-rd) , 100, 102, 103, 117 
Port Pitt (pit), 102, 117 
Port Stanwix (stan'wiks). 143 
Port Sumter (sum'ter). 407-408 
Port Washington (wosh'mg-tun) , 139 
Port William Henry, 102 
"Forty-Niners", the. 370-371 
Fox (foks), Charles James, 121 
Fox River, 90 

France (frans), 4, 62, 66, 87, 104, 161-162, 
199, 206, 223, 224, 467, 563, 564, 592 

rivalry with England, 87-105 

helps America in the Revolution. 145- 
147 

revolution in, 204-205 

our trouble with, 211-213 

tramples upon our rights on the sea, 
233-236 

in the World War. 574. 580 
Franklin (frank'lln). Benjamin, 101. 108, 
113, 122, 130, 135, 148, 1.59, 165, 184, 
269 

in France, 146, 152, 1.54 

portrait of, 146 
Franklin. State of, 189 
Fredericksburg (fred'er-Iks-bilrg") , liat tie 

of, 416 
Freedmen, the, 454-455 
Freeport question, 398. 399 
Free-soil party, 375, 394 
Fremont (fre-mont'), Gen. John C. 364, 

366. 394, 413 
French (french), 34, 49, 63, 66, 193, 330, 
580 

motives of. 89-90 

in the Mississippi Valley, 90-93, 176 

contrasted with English, 93-95 

sympathize with Americans, 145-146 

in Mexico, 466-467 
French and Indian War, 99-105, 108, 109. 
117, 176. 223 

cause. 99 

geographic influences in, 99-100 

military events, 100-104 

results, 104-105 
French Revolution, 204-205, 249 
Friends, see Qiiakers. 
Frobisher (frob'ish-er), Martin, 16, 17 
Frolic, 244 
Frontier, 188, 495 

life on the, 190-194, 304-308 

journey to the, 301-304 

the vanishing, 488-505 
Fugitive Slave Law, 381-383 
Fugitive slaves, 374-375 
Pulton (foSl'tijn), Robert, 280 
Furniture, 73 
Fur trade, 90 



614 



INDEX 



Gadsdon (gadz'den), Christopher, 112-113 

Gadsden Purchase, 367 

CJage (gaj), General Thomas, 124, 128 

"Gag rule", 351 

(iallatln (gal'd-tln), Albert, 203, 220 

portrait of, 203 
Gallipoli (gal-lS'po-lS) , 576 
Gama (da gii-ma), Vasco da, 6 
Garfleld (giir'feld), James A., 506-507 

portrait of, 506 
Garrison (gar'I-siin) , William Lloyd, 346- 
348, 401 

portrait of, 348 
Gas engine, 475 
Gatas (gats). General Horatio, 143, 150- 

151, 153 
Genet (zhe-ne'). Edmond Charles, 207 
Geneva (j§-ne'vd), 595 
Geneva Award, 468 
Genius of Universal Emancipation, the, 

346 
Genoa (jen'6-d), 5 
George III (jorj), 109-110, 111, 133, 152 

portrait of, 109 
George, David Lloyd (jorj, loid), 592 
Georgia (j6r'jl-d), 33-34, 42, 44, 63, 71, 
83, 93, 123, 137, 149, 184, 188, 403, 
462 
Germans, 34. 37, 63-64, 66, 79, 83, 193, 
381, 542, 544, 547, 574, 575, 577, .578, 
585, 588, 591-592 
Germantown (jiir'man-toun), battle of, 

142 
Germany (jQr'man-i), 556-557, 563, 573 
574, 576, 577, 578-579, 592, 593-594 
Gerry (ggr'I), Elbridge, 211-212 
Gettvsburg (get'tls-biirg), battle of, 421- 

425 
Ghent (gent), treaty of, 248 
Gilbert (gll'bert). Sir Humphrey, 16 
Gladstone (glad'stun), William E., 167 
Goethals (go'thalz). Colonel G. W., 567 
Gold, in California, 369-370 

in the Rocky Mountain region, 489-490 
Goodyear (g65d'ygr), Charles. 387 
Gorges and Mason (gor'jes, ma'sfln), 28 
Government, of the colonies, 53 

town in New England, 53-54 

county in the South. 53-54 

mixed in middle colonies, 54 

beginnings of our. 157-173 

federal defined, 157 

from colonial to state, 157-158 

our first national, 158-160 

under the Articles of Confederation, 
160-164 

need of a stronger, 164 
Governor, the colonial, 55-56, 108 
Grady (grad'I), Henry W., 463 
Grand Army of the Republic, 451 
Grand Canyon, 503 

Grant (grant), U. a., 369, 416, 417. 418, 
419. 420, 421, 426, 427, 506 

and Lee, 430-432 

elected president, 464 

his administration, 464-465 

portrait of, 464 
Vira,y (gra). Captain Robert, 228 
Great Britain (brit'dn). at war with 
American Colonies, 107-156 

our second war with, 233-249 



dispute with Venezuela, 556 

in the Far East, 563-564 

in the World War, 577-578, 592 
Great Charter, Magna Charta, 107 
Great Lakes, 89, 90, 118, 184 
Great Salt Lake, 364 
Greece (gres), 574 
Greeks (greks), 2, 4, 330 
Greeley (gre'U), Horace, 401, 404, 464 

portrait of, 465 
"Greenbacks", 441-442 
Green Bay, 90, 91, 177 
Green (gren), John Richard, 110 
Greene (gren). General Nathanael, 129, 

132. 151. 1.53 
Granville (gren'vll), George, 110. 113 
Griffin (grif'ln), 91 
Guam (gwam), 560 
Guerricre (gar'ryar'), 244 
Guilford Court House' (gll'ferd), battle of, 

151 
Gwynedd (gwln'ed), Pennsylvania, 65 



Haiti (ha'tl), 8, 9, 10 
Hale (hal), Nathan, 140 
Halifax (hal'I-faks) , 99, 132, 241 
Halleck (hal'ek). General, 419 

portrait of, 419 
Hamilton (ham'Il-tun), Alexander, 164, 

105, 168, 169, 196-197, 202, 203, 229 
financial policy of, 198-202 
portrait of, 169 
Hamilton, Henry, British governor, IS.'i 
Hamlin (ham'lln), Hannibal, 402 
Hampton (hamp'tun), Virginia (vir-jin' 

I-d), 463, 502 
Hancock (han'kok). General Winfleld 

Scott. 423, 425, 506 
Hancock, John. 128 
Harding (hiird'Ing) .Warren G., .096 
Hargreaves (har'grevz). James, 273-274 
Harlem Heights (har'lem), 138 
Harpers Ferry (har'perz), 400-401 
Harrisburg (har'Is-burg) , 422 
Harrison (har'I-sun), Benjamin, 508,534 

portrait of, 508 
Harrison, William Henry, 239, 242, 296, 

329-330, 355 
Harrodsburg (har'iidz-burg) , 179, 182 
Harte (hart), Bret, 539 
Hartford (hart'ferd), 29 
Harvard (har'vdrd), John, 82 
Havana (hd-van'd), 104 
Hawaii (ha-wT'i), 563 
Hawkins (ho-kinz), John, 15, 17 

portrait of, 15 
Hawthorne (ho'thorn), Nathaniel, 332- 

3.33. 388. 539 
Hav (ha), John, 564. 565. .566 
Hayes (haz), Rutherford B., 405-466, 500 

portrait of, 466 
Hayne (han). Robert Y., 324-325 
Health, 260-261 

protection of. 534-535 
Hebrews (he'brooz), 2 
Helena (hel'e-nd), Montana (mon-ta'nd), 

490 
Henrv (hen'rl), Patrick, 111-112, 123, 124, 

125. 130, 1.54, 166, 169, 182 
Herkimer (hQr'kl-mer), General Nicholas, 

143, 154 



INDEX 



615 



Hessians (hesh'anz), 133, 141 

Hobsoii iholj'sn). Lieutenant, 550 

lloo (ho). Richard M., 3S7 

Holland Uwrand), 17, G2, 119, 149, 161- 

102, 199, 577 
Holmes (honiz). Dr. Oliver Wendell, 332- 
■ ■< 333, 3.SS, 440 
Holy Alliance, 251-252 
Homestead Act,_496 
Honolnlu (h6"no-loo'loo), 563 
Hood (hood). General John Bell, 427, 428 
Hooker (hook'er). General Joseph, 416, 

422, 426 
Hooker, Thomas. 28-29, 63 
Hoover (hoo'ver), Herbert C, 581 
Hopkins (hSp'kInz). Captain Esek, 147 
Horn book, 81 
Hornet. 244 

House (hous), Edward M., .592 
House of Representatives, 166. 109-170. 

173 
Houses, in the colonies. 71-73 
Houston (hiis'tun), (Jeneral Sam. 357.358 
Howe (hou). Elias. 386-387 
Ho\ve.*General William. 138, 141, 142 
Howe, Julia Ward, 436 

portrait of, 437 
Howells (hou'elz), William Dean, 530 
Hudson (hud'sun), Henry, 16, 30 
Hudson Bay, 46, 09 
Hudson River, 30. 31, 42, 44, 63. 66, 78, 

79. 99. 118. 138. 140. 142. 149, 280 
Huerta (wer'tit), Victoriano, 569-570 
Hughes (huz), Charles E., 526 
Huguenots (hu'ge-nots), 34, 63, 66, 193, 

542 
Hull (hul), Captain Isaac, 244, 245 
Hull, General William, 242 
Hutchinson (hiich'In-siin) , Anne, 2S 
Hutchinson, Governor Thomas, 122 



I 



Idaho (i'dd-ho), 250, 363, 368, 502, 528 
Illinois (Il-11-noi'; -noiz), 184, 187, 299. 

.301, 309, 331, 384, 488 
Illinois River, 91 
Immigration, 293, 384-385 

later, 544-545 

rastriction of, .549-551 
Impeachment, 172-173 

of President Johnson, 457 
Impressment of .sailors, 208. 235, 237 
Independence Hall. 136. 165. 168 
Independent treasury system, 329 
India (In'dl-d), 8, 30, 109 
Indiana (In-dl-an'd), 184, 187, 299, 308, 

309, 488 
Indians, 8, 11, 45-49, 55, 65, 110, 331-332 

their treatment by the Spaniards, 13 

life of the, 45 

races and tribes of, 46 

nature of, 47 

and the white men, 47 

wars with the. 48-49. 190. 239. 247, 332. 
501 

relations with French and English. 94 

in the Revolution. 180-182 

later treatment of. 502 
Indian Territory. 331-332 
Industrial Revolution. 273-294, 471 

meaning of. 291-294 

effects of, 483-485 



Industries, in the colonies, 49-53 

changes in, 273-294 

during the Civil War. 438-439 

growth of. 470-482 

effect of changes in upon life. 482-485 
Initiative, the. 528 
Intercolonial Wars. 95-105 
Internal Improvements. 284-286 
Inter-State Commerce Act. 516, .530 
Inter-State Commerce Commission, 510, 

530 
Inventions, 261-262, 273-281, 286-291, 

386-387 
Iowa (I'o-wd), 331, 362 
Ireland (ir'land), 17, 62, 64 
Irish (i'rish), 65, 384, 542, 544. 547 
Iron, 278-279, 386, 473-474 
Iroquois (ir"o-kwoi') , 46, 49, 88-89, 100, 

145. 181, 185 
Irrigation, 499-500 
Irving (ur'ving), Washington, 259, 269, 

332-333 
Isabella (iz'd-bel'd) I, Queen of Si)airi, 7, 8 
Island No. 10, 417 
Italians, 544, 576 
Italy (It'd-li), 223, 573, .580, .502 



Jackson (jak'sun), Andrew, 247-248, 251, 
296, ,308, 316, 317, 318-321, 322. 324. 
326-327. 328, 3.50. 359 

portrait of. 319 
Jackson. Michigan. 394 
Jackson, Mississippi, 420 
Jackson, General "Stonewall", 309, 413- 
414, 415, 416 

portrait of, 413 
Jamaica (jn-ma'kd), 10 
James I (jamz), 20, 25 
James II, 34, 56, 107 
James River. 20. 78 
Jamestown (jamz'toun), 20, 43, 69 

sufferings of the settlers, 21 

burned, 56 
Japan (jd-piin'), 8, 549, 564. 565, 573, 592 
Japanese (jap'd-nez), 550 
Java (ja'vd), 245 

.lay (ia), John. 123, 152, 154, 168, 184, 198, 
202. 208 

portrait of, 202 
Jefferson (jef'er-sfln), Thomas, 123, 154, 
166, 196-197, 203, 204, 206, 211, 214, 
234, 23.5-236, 249, 2.53, 270, 316, 3.57 

writes Declaration of Independence, 
134 136 

the leader of democracy, 217-221 

inauguration of, 219-220 

character and career. 220-221 

on the Missouri Compromise. 340 
Jesuits (jez'fl-Its). 90 
Jewish Welfare Board. 592 
Jews, 544 

Joffre (zho'fr). Marshal J. J. C, 575, 580 
Johnson (jon'sun), Andrew, 447. 4.54, 463 

reconstruction plan of. 452-453 

quarrels with Congress. 455-456 

impeached. 457 

portrait of, 452 
Johnston (jonz'stun). General Albert Sid- 
ney, 418, 419 
.lohnston. General Joseph E., 413, 427 
Joliet (jo'll-et), 00. 01 
Jones (jonz), John Paul, 147-149, 154, 241 



616 



INDEX 



K 

Kalb. De (kalb' de). 145-146' 

Kansas (kan'zds), 2, 11, 227, 384, 474, 496, 

502 
the struggle for, 391-393 
Kansas City, 495 
Kansas-Nebraska (kan'zds nS-bras'kd) 

Act, 390-391, 394 
Kaskaskia (kas-kas'ki-d), 182, 183 
Kearny (kar'nl). General Philip, 360 
Kearsarge (ker'sarj), the, 412 
Kennebec (ken'e-bek), 28, 44 
Kentucky (ken-tuk'i), 130, 177, 178-179, 

180, 181, 185, 188-189, 190, 224, 296, 

299, 308, 408-409, 488 
resolutions of, 214 
Key (ke) , Francis Scott, 247 
King George's War. 95, 98 
King John, 107 
King's College. 82 
Kings Mountain, battle of, 151 
King William's War, 95, 98 
Klondike (klon'dik), 491. 521 
Knights of Columbus, 591 
Knights of Labor, 511 
"Know Nothing" Party, see American 

Party 
Knox (noks). General Henry, 153, 196-197 
Knox^^lle (noks'vil), Tennessee (ten"ne.s- 

se') , 427 
Ku-Klux Klan (ku'kluks") , 459-460 



Labor, in the colonies. 51 

and capital, 293 

the organization of, 510-512 

laws protecting, 532 

Department of, 532 
Lafayette (la'fa-yef) , Gilbert Moticr de, 

142, 145, 151, 1.54 
Lake Champlain (sham-plan'), 89, 99, 100, 

118, 142, 241, 242, 246 
Lake Erie (e'rl), battle of, 242 
Lake George (jorj), 99, 102 
Lake Huron (hu'ron), 89 
Lake Michigan (mish'l-gdn), 91 
Lake Ontario (6n-ta'rI-o) , 100, 102 
Lanier (la-ner'), Sidney, 539 
La Salle (la sal'), Robert Cavelier, Sieiir 

de, 93-92, 176 
Land claims of the states, 160 
Lansing (lan'sing), Robert, 592 
Latin America, 12-14, 251, 252 

races of, 13 

life of the people in, 13 

government in, 13-14 

missions in, 14 
Lawrence (16'rens). 242 
Lawrence, Captain James, 244, 245 
Lawrence, Kansas, 393 
Laws, how made. 170-171 
League of Natiohs, 594-596 
Leclerc (15 kler'). General Victor Em- 
manuel, 223 ' 
Lee (le), Richard Henry, 134 
Lee, Robert E., 369, 413, 414, 415, 416, 
421, 422, 423, 424 

and Grant. 430-432 
Legislature, the colonial, 54-55 
Lenni Lenape (Icn'I len'a-pe), 46 
Leopard, 235 
Lesseps (la'seps'), Ferdinand de, 565 



"Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer", 116 
Lewis and Clark (loo'Is; klark), 226-228, 

250, 360 
Lewis, Meriwether, 226 
Lexington (leks'Ing-tfin) , flght at, 128 

Kentucky, 130 
"Liberal Republicans", 464 
Liberator, The. 346, 348 
Liberia (IT-be'rl-d), 346 
Liberty Bell, 136 
Liberty Bonds, 590 
Libertyparty, 347-348 
Lima (le'ma), 14 

Lincoln (lihg'kiin), Abraham, 305, 394, 
405, 410. 424. 443, 445 

debates with Douglas, 396-399 

elected president, 402-403 

first inaugural. 407 

calls for troops, 408 

issues Emancipation Proclamation, 444- 
445 

re-election of, 446-447 

second inaugural. 447 

death of, 447-448 

estimate of, 446-448 

statue of, 444 

views on reconstruction, 452 
Lincoln-Douglas Debate, 396-399 
Lincoln, General Benjamin, 149 
Literature, American. 332-333, 539 
Little Big Horn, battle of, 501 
Livingston (liv'Ing-stun) , Robert R., 225 
Lloyd George (loid J6r1), 593 
Locomotives, 286-288 
Lodge (loj), Henry Cabot, 210 
London (liin'dijn), 40 
London Company, 20, 22-23 
Longfellow (16ng'fel-6) , Henry Wads- 
worth, 128, 332-333, 388, 440 
Long Island, 32, 44 

battle of, 138 
Longstreet (long'stret) , General James, 

423 
Lords, House of, 109 
Louis XVI of France (loo'Is), 204, 205 

portrait of. 204 
Louisburg (loo'Is-bQrg), 98, 99, 102 
Louisiana (loo''e-ze-a'nd), 93, 152. 222. 
223. 229, 251, 403, 416, 461, 462. 466 

purchase of, 224-225, 250, 356-357 

occupation and exploration of. 225-228 

admitted to the Union. 226, 301, 308 

meaning of purchase of, 230 
Louisville (1oo'i-\t1), 182, 311 
L'Ouverture (loo"ver'tur), Toussaint (too" 

sah'), 223-224 
Lovejoy (luv'joi), Elijah P., 349 
Lowell (lo'el), Francis C, 275 
Lowell. James Russell, 332-333, 348, 365, 

383. 388, 440, 539 
Loyalists, in the Revolution, 136-137 
Lundy (Itin'dl), Benjamm, 346 
Lundy's Lane (lun'dlz Ian), 242 
Lusilania (IQ'sI-ta'nl-d), 578 
Lutherans (loo'ther-anz), 83 
Lyon (li'un), Mary, 332 

M 

McClellan (md-klel'an) , General George 
B., 408,412, 416 
campaign on the Peninsula. 413-414 
in the Antietam Campaign. 415 
candidate for president, 447 



INDEX 



617 



McOormick ( md-kor'mlk) , Cyrus H., 290 
MacDonough (mak-dOn'o) , Thomas, 246- 

247 
McDowell (mak-dou'el), General Irvin, 

412, 413, 414, 410 
McHenry (mak-hen'ri) , Jerry, 383 
McKinley (md-kln'll) , William, .514, 520, 
521, 522, .'524, 534, 5.58 

portrait of, 521 
McMaster (mak-mas'ter) , John Bach, 539 
Macedonian (mas"e-do'nI-an) , 244 
Machinery, labor-saving, 386-387 

age of, 471-474 

eflfects of, 482-485 
"Machines", political, 527-528 
Mackinac (mak'I-no), 90, 91 
Madero (ma-da'ro), Francesco, 569 
Madison (mad'I-siin), James, 164. 165, 
166, 168, 203, 214, 218, 236, 237, 239, 
249, 284, 316 
Magellan (md-jel'ldn), Ferdinand, 9 
Magellan, Strait of, 15 
Magna C^harta, Great Charter, 107 
Maine (man), 44, 71, 309, 339 
Maine, the, 558 

Mandan Indians (man'dan). 227 
Manhattan Ifeland (man-hat'tdn), 30 
Manila (md-nil'd), 104, 559, 562 

battle of, 559 
Mann (man), Horace, 332, 376 

portrait of, 377 
Manufactures, in the colonies, 51-52 

restricted, 58 

in the early republic, 262-263 

rapid gro^vth of, 386 

in the New South. 462-403 

development of, 472 
Marconi (mar-ko'nl), William, 476 
Marco Polo (mar'ko po'lo), 5 
Marietta (ma'ri-et'd) , Ohio, 1.89 
Marion (mar'i-iin). General Francis, 149- 

1.50, 1.54 
Markham (mark'dm), Edwin, 446 
Mark Twain (mark twan), 539 

portrait of, 538 
Marne (marn). first battle of, 575 

second battle of, 587 
Marquette (miir'ket"), Jacques, 90-91, 

176 
Marshall (mar'shai), John, 211-212, 219 
Maryland (mer'I-Iand) , 23-24, 42, 52, 55, 

63, 65, 83, 100, 164, 185, 408, 445 
Mary, wife of William IV, 56 

Mason (ma'son), 410 

Massachusetts (mas"d-choo's6ts) , 26-28, 
43, 48, 53, 56, 82, 85, 112, 184, 185. 
309 

education in. 78-79 

punished by Parliament, 121 

committees of correspondence in, 122 

minute men in, 124-125 

ratifies the Constitution, 169 
Massachusetts Bay Company, 26 
Mass£isoit (mas'd-soit") , 48 
Maximilian (mak'si-miryan) , 467 
Meade (med). General George G., 422, 
423, 424 

portrait of, 422 
Mediterranean Sea (med'I-ter-ra'nS-dn), 2 
Memphis (mem'ffs), 417, 419 
Merrlmac River (mer'I-mak), 28, 44 
Merrimnc. the. 410-411 

in the Spanish War, 559 



Methodism. 83 

Meuse-Argonne (mQz-ar'gon'). campaign 

Mexican War, 363-369 

Mexico (meks'I-ko), 10, 11, 12, 13. 228, 

229, 251 
conquered by Spain, 10 
invaded by U. S., 366-367 
treaty of peace with, 367 
French in, 466-467 

our relations with, 569-571 
Mexico, City of, 10, 14, 360-367 
Mexico, Gulf of, 12, 92, 93 
Michigan (mish'l-gdn) , 184, 187, 242, 301, 

309 
Miles (milz). General Nelson A., 500 
Milwaukee (mfl-wo'ke), 312 
Mining, 386 

growth of, in the West, 489-492 
Minnesota (min'ne-so'td) , 227, 384 
Mint established, 201 
Mississippi (mls"ls-slp'pl) , 304, 308, 309. 

403. 4.58. 463, 488 
Mississippi River, 11, 46, 91, 93, 176, 184, 

222, 226, 227, 230, 279, 281, 299, 416- 

421 
Mississippi Valley, 45, 65, 69, 104, 193, 

230, 283, 291, 296, 310 
French in, 90 93 

Missouri (miz-zoo'rl) , 226, 301, 308-309, 

339-340, 409. 445, 488 
Missouri Compromise, 338-340, 374, 390, 

396 
Missouri River, 91, 93, 226-227, 301 
Mobile (mo'bel), 311, 427-428 
Modocs (mo'doks), 501 
Mohammedans (mo-ham 'ed-anz), 4 
Mohawk River (mo'hok), 44, 100 
Mohawk Valley, 63, 99-100, 118, 142, 301 
Mohawks, 46 
Money, in the colonies, 52-53 

during and after the Revolution, 162- 

163 
history of, 510-.520 
Monitor, fights the Merrlmac, 411 
Monmouth (mon'miith) , battle of, 145 
Monongahela River (mO-non'gd-he'ld), 

100, 182, 278 
Monroe Doctrine (miin ro'), 251-253, 407, 

556-557, 596 
Monroe, James, 203, 211, 218, 225, 252, 

284, 316 
Montana (m6n-tii'nd) , .501 
Montcalm (m6n"kam'), L. J. St. V., 

Marquis de, 102, 103 
Montenegro (m5n"ta-na'gr5) , 573 
Montgomery (mont-giim'er-I), Alabama 

(al"d-ba'md), 403, 408 
Montgomery, Richard, 132-133 
Montreal (m6n"tre-61'), 87, 93, 104, 132, 

241 _ 

Moore's Creek (moorz), fight at, 137 
Morgan (mor'gan), General Daniel, 151, 

154 
Mormons, 334, 500, 502-503 
Morris (mor'Is), Gouvemeur, 107 
Morris, Robert. 1.54, 162. 165 
Morristown (mor'is-toun), 141 
Morse (mors), Samuel F. B.. 289, 475 
Morse's "Geography", 267 
Mount Holyoke (hol'yok), 332 
Mount Vernon (viir'nun), 153, 164, 196, 

208 



018 



INDEX 



Muskiiogeans (musk-ho'gS-&nz) , 46 
Muskingum River (mQs-kln'gum) , 189 

N 

Napoleon (nd-po'le-un) Bonaparte (bo'nd- 
part), 213. 230, 240, 246, 251 

colonial scheme of, 223-224 

attacks American rights on the sea, 233- 
237 

portrait of, 213 
Napoleon III, 467 
Narragansetts (nar"d-gan'sets) , 46 
Nashville (nash'vil), 180, 463 

battle of, 428 
Natchez (nach'ez), 230 
National banks, 442-443 
"National Pike]^', 283-284 
Nauvoo (na'voo), 334 
Navigation Acts, 57-.59. 108 

efforts to enforce, 110-111, 118 
Navy, beginnings of, 147-149 

in the War of 1812, 243-246 

in the Civil War, 410-412 
Nebraska (ne-bras'kd), 496, 502 
Negroas, disfranchised, 463 

in our midst, 547-549 
Nelson (nel'sun), Lord Horatio. 233 

portrait of, 233 
Neutrality, in 1793, 206 
Nevada (ne-va'dd), 368. 400. .502 
New Amsterdam (am'ster-dam), 31, 32 
New England (In'gland). 35. 37. 39, 42, 43, 
44, 48, 49, 52, ,53, 56, 62, 64, 76, 83, 
110, 138. 188 

beginnings of, 24-30 

life in. 29-30, 257-258 

education in, 78-79, 267 

church services in, .83-84 

border warfare in, 96-98 

Confederation, 122 

revolutionary rising in. 129 
New England Primer. 81 
Newfoundland (nu'fiand-land). 99, 153 
New France (frans). beginnings of, 87-90 

life in, 93-95 
New Hampshire (hamp'shlr), 28, 44, 93, 

129, 185 
New Haven (ha'vn), 29, 32 
New Jersey (jer'sl), 34-35, 42, 44, 56, 62, 

63, 137, 140, 166, 168, 185 
New Mexico (meks'I-ko), 367, 368, 380, 

502 
New Netherland (neth'er-land). 30-32, 34 
New Orleans (or'le-anz), 93, 104, 199, 222, 
224, 225, 230, 299-301, 311 

battle of. 247-248 

captured by Parragut. 418-419 
Newport (nu'port). 28. 149 
Newspapers, 268-269 
New Sweden (swe'den), 31 
New York (nil-york'), 34, 42, 43, 44, 46, 
49, 56, .57, 63, 75, 96, 98, 112, 120, 
129, 137, 138, 145, 181, 185, 188, 299, 
301 

schools in, 80 

British troops in, 117-118 

Revolutionary War in. 138-140 

selfish policy of. 163 

ratifies the Constitution. 169 

life in. 258-2.59 
New York City, 30, 149, 153, 196, 257, 

258, 285 
]S!iagara (ni-ag'd-rd), 24? 



Niagara frontier, 241-242 
Niagara River, 91, 100, 241, 242 
Nicaragua (nl-kd-ra'gwd), 557, 566 
Nicolls (nik'ulz). Colonel Sir Richard, 32 
Nou-Intercourse Act, 237, 275, 281 
North America (d-mer'I-kd), 16, 38, 87 
North Carolina (ka"r6-irnd) , 33, 52, 63, 
65, 169, 177, 189 

Tories in, 137 

campaign in, 151 

secession of. 408 
North Dakota (dd-ko'td), 496, 502 
North. Lord, 121, 1.52 
Northwest Territory, won by George 
Rogers Clark, 1S2-184 

claimed by Virginia, 185 

organized in 1787, 187-188 

life in, 190-194 

growth of. 308 
Norwalk (nor- wok). 147 
Nova Scotia (no'vd sko'shl-d), 88, 99 
Nueces River (nii-a'.sas) , 365 
Nullification, 324-326 

O 

Oberlin Ctollegc (o'-ber-lln). 332 
Oglethorpe (o'gl-thorp) , .Tames. 33, 39. 63 
Ohio (6-hi'6). 184. 187, 1S9-190, 296, 299, 

301, 308, 488 
Ohio Company, 189 
Ohio River, 91. 93. 100, 182, 184, 185. 189, 

199, 222, 279, 280, 281, 298-299 
Oklahoma (ok"ld-h6'md). 2, 462, 474, 497, 

.503 
Omaha (6'ma-ho), 495 
Oneidas (6-ni'ddz). 46 
Onondagas (6n"6n-d6'gdz), 46 
Ordinance of 1787, 187-188, 260, 296, 374 
Oregon (or'e-gon), 250. 363, 368. 374. 384. 

489, 498 
Oregon Country, 2.50. 360-361. 362-363 
Oregon, the. 565 

Oriskany (6-rIs'kd_-nI) , battle of, 143 
Orlando (or-lan'do). Premier. 593 
Oswego (6s-we'g5), 102, 142 
Otis (6'tls), James, 112 
Ottawa River (6t'd-wa), 89 



Pacific Ocean (pd-slf'lk), 1, 9, 15. 16, 38. 
226, 227 

Pago Pago (pa'go pii'go), 563 

Paine (pan), Thomas. 133-134 

Pakenham (pak'en-am). General Sir Ed- 
ward Michael. 248 

Panama (pan-d-ma'), 9, 566 

Panama Canal, 88. 565-568 

Pan-American movement, 555-556 

Panic, of 1837, 327-330 
of 1873, 478 

Paris (pa'rTs). Treaty of. 1763, 104. 109 
Treaty of, 1783. 1.52-153 

Parker (par'ker). Alton B., 525 

Parker. Captain John, 128 

Parkman (piirk'man), Francis. 47, 90. 177 

Parks. National. 503 

Parliament. 107. 109. 113. 119 
representation in. 110-111 
taxes America. Ill 117 
repi^als duties except tea tax. 117 
punishes Boston and Massachusetts, 121 
passes reprcsjiive measures, 124 



INDEX 



619 



Parties, political, beginning of, 201-204 

Federalists, 202-204 

Republican or Democratic-Republican, 
202-204 
I'aterson (pat'er-siin). William, liir> 
I'awtucket (po-tilk'et), Rhode Island, 27.5 
Peace' Conference, of 1919, 593-594 
Peacock (pe'kok"), the, 244 
Peale (pel), Charles Willson, 209 
Pea Ridge, battle of, 416 
Pemberton (pem'ber-tun), Ceneral John 

C, 421 
Peninsula campaign, 413-414 
Penn (pen). Admiral Sir William. 36 
Penn, William, 35-37, 39, 49. 63 

portrait of, 36 
Pennsylvania (pen"sil-va'nl-d), 35-37, 42, 
44, 49, .54, 55, 62, 63, 64-65, 79, 83, 
85, 100, 129, 137, 145, 158, 168, 181, 
185, 188, 190, 199, 299 

schools in, 80 

life in, 258-259 

coal in, 279 

internal improvements in, 285-286 
Pennsylvania, University of, 82 
Pensacola (pen"sd-ko'ld), 251 
Pequots (pe'kwots), 46, 48 
Percy (per'sl), Lord, 129 
Perdido River (per-de'do), 251 
Perry (per'I). Oliver Hazzard. 242. 245 
Perry\ille (per'I- \i[l) , battle of. 420 
Pershing (per'.shlng) , General John J., 571, 
583, 58S 

portrait of, 582 
Peru (pe-roo'), 10, 12, 13 
Peru\'ians, 10 
"Pet Banks", 327 
Petersburg (pe'terz-biirg) , Virginia, 430, 

431 
Petroleum, 386, 474-475 
Philadelphia (fird-del'fl-d), 35, 43, 65, 73, 
79, 120. 130, 136, 140, 141, 142, 196, 
200. 201, 207, 257, 286 
Phlhp 11 (ni'Ip), 17 
Pliilip, King (Indian), 48 
Philippine Islands (fll'i-pln), 558-5.59, 560. 

,561-563 
Phillips (fll'ips), Wendell, 349-350 

portrait of, 350 
Pickett's Charge (pik'et), 424 
Pierce (pers). Franklin, 382 

portrait of, 382 
Pike (pik), Zebulon N., 227-228 
Pilgrim Fathers, 24-25, 48 
Pinchot (pin'sho). Gilford. 534 
Pinckney (pink'nl). Charles C. 211-212 
Pinckney. Thomas. 222 
Pinckneys. 165 
Pioneers, quality of, 297-298 

influence of frontier upon, 312-314 

on the prairies, 498 
Pitcairn (pit'kam). Major John. 128 
Pitt (pit), William, 102, 109, 113 
Pittsburgh (pits'burg), 102, 177, 190, 222, 

279, 280. 281. 311 
Pizarro (pl-ziir'ro). Francisco, 10 
Plains of Abraham (a'brd-ham), 103 
Plattsburg Bay (plats'burg) , battle of, 

246-247 
Plymouth (pllm'uth), 25, 48, 69, 78 
Poe (po), Edgar Allan, 332-333 
Pokanokets (po'kd-nS'kets) , 48 
Poland (po'land), 593 



Polk, James K. (pok), 361-362, 304-365 

Pontiac (p6n'tl-ak), 177, 180 

Pope (pop). General .John, 414-415, 417. 

419 
Popular Sovereignty. 374. 375, 390-391 
Population, 257, .544 
Populist Party. .520 
Port Hudson (hud'siin). 421 
Porter (por'ter), (^aptain David. 245 
Porter. Commodore AVilliam David. 420 
Porto Rico (por'to re'ko), 10, 557, 560- 

561 
Port Royal (roi'al), 88, 98 
Portsmouth (ports'muth). 28 
Portugal (por'tu-gal)_, 6, 10, 11, 38, 574 
Portuguese (por'ttl-gez) , 5-6 
Potato, 17 

Potomac (p6-to'mak), 44. 78. 100. 164. 200 
Power, sources of, 474-476 
Presbyterians, 35, 64-6.5, S3, 108 
Prascott (pres'kiit). Colonel William, 131 
President, the, 170-172 

election of, 171 

duties, 171-172 
Prince Henry the Navigator, 5-6 
Princeton (prins'tiin) , 82 

battle of, 141 
Printing, 14, 82-83, 387 
Privateers, in the Revolution, 147 

in the War of 1812. 245 
Progressive party, 526 
Progressives, 530 
Prohibition, 53.5-536 
Protective Tariff, 281-283 
Protestants, 17, 24, 95, 334 
Providence (pr6v'I-dens) . 28 
Prussia (prush'd), 233-234, 251 
Prussians (priish'ans), 205, 234 
Public Land System, 18,5-187 
Pueblo (pwa'blo), Colorado. 491 
Pulaski (pu-las'ld). Count Casimir, 14,5- 

146, 149 
Puritans, 24-25, 62, 78, 83, 108 
Putnam (put'nam), Israel, 129 

Q 

Quakers, 35-37, 39, 49, 62, 83, 85, 108, 

136, 350 
Quebec (kw6-bek'), 88, 91, 93. 98, 99, 184, 
241 
siege of, 103 

attacked by Americans, 132-133 
Quebec Act, 121. 1.84 
Queen Anne's War, 95, 98 
Queenstown (kwenz'toun) , 241 

R 

Railroads, 286-289, 387 

influence of, 289, 387-388 ) 

age of, 476-479 

first transcontinental, 477 

problem of the, 514-515 

regulation of, 530 
Raleigh, Sir Walter (ro'll), 16-17 
Randolph (ran'dolf), Edmund. 196-197 
Ranger, the. 148 

Read (red), Lt. Commander Albert C, 597 
Read, Thomas Buchanan, 431 
Reciprocity, 514 
Reclamation Service, 500 
Reconstruction of the Southern States, 
452-455 



620 



INDEX 



Red Cross Society, 437, 591 
Red River, 226 
Referendum, the, 528 
Republican party, 391, 396, 506 

beginning of, 394-395 

in the election of 1860, 402-403 
Republicans, early, 202-204, 213-215, 

217-219, 238, 249. 316 
Resolutions, of Virginia and Kentucky, 

214 
Revere (re-ver'), Paul, 128 
Revolution, American, causes of, 107-125 

true character of, 107-109, 137 

war of, 128-1.54 

British plan of attack in, 138 

British plan in 1777, 141 

fighting in the South, 149-152 

end of the war. 152-153 

men of the, 153-154 

influence on France, 205 
Revolution, French, 204-205 
Revolution, in England, 32. 56, 95, 107 
Rhine (rin), 3, 63 
Rhode Island (rod), 28, 43, 55, 56, 79, 83, 

85. 129, 157, 165, 169, 185 
Rhodes (rodz). James Ford, 539 
Richmond (rich'mund). 408. 412. 416, 430, 

431, 432 
Riley (rl'll). James Whitcomb. 539 
Rio Grande (re'5 griin'da). 228. 365, 366 
Rivers, influence of, 43 
Robertson (r6b'ert-sun) , James, 180, 189, 

193, 296, 488 
Rochambeau (ro'shan'Tso'), J- B. D. de 

v., Count. 152 
Rocky Mountains. 93. 227-228, 230 
Roebuck (ro'buk). John, 278 
Roman Empire. 2-3 
Romans, 2. 3. 13 

Roosevelt (ro'ze-velt) , Theodore. 524-526, 
.527, 530, 531, 533, 534, 557, 560, 565, 
566, 598 

portrait of, 523 
Rosecrans (rS'ze-kraaz) . General William 
S., 420. 426 

portrait of, 426 
Roumania (roo-ma'nT-ri). 574, 576 
Rumsey (riim'zl), .Tames, 280 
Russia (rush'd), 233-234, 251, 252, 468, 

.563. 564. .573, 574, 575, 585 
Rutledge (riit'lej). John, 123, 165 



Safety first, 533 

St. Clair (klar'). General Arthur, 189-190 

Saint-Gaudens (sant go'denz), Augustus, 

539 
St. Ignace (en'yds'), 91 
St. Lawrence, Gulf of (16'rens), 87, 99 
St. Lawrence River. 89. 93. 99. 104 
St. Leger (sant-16j'or). General. 142, 143 
St. Louis (loo'Is). 227. 311 
St. Mary's (mii'rlz). 23 
St. Mihiel (san'me''yer), battle of, 587-58S 
Sabbath keeping. 84 
Sacramento Valley (sak'rd-men'to), 371 
Salem (sa'lem). 27. 68. 78 
Salvation Army. 591 
San Diego (.san d6-a'go). 363 
Salt Lake City. 334 
Samoan Islands (sa-mo'an). 563 
Sampson (samp'sun). Admiral. 559 
San Francisco (san fran-sls'ko) , 2, 363, 371 



Sanitary Commission, 437 

San Jacinto (san jd-sln'to), battle of, 359 

San Juan Hill (hwan) , 560 

San Martin (mar'tin), 251 

Santa Anna (san'ta a'na) , Antonio Lopez 

de. 358 
Santiago (san'te-a'go) . battles of. 559-560 
Santo Domingo (san'to do-mlh'go), 223- 

224. 557 
Saratoga (sar"d-to'gd) . battles at. 143 
Sargent (sar'jent). John S., 539 
Sault Ste. Marie (soo" sant ma'rl). 90 
Savannah (sd-van'd). Georgia (j6r'jl-d), 

33. 149. 151. 153. 429 
Savannah, the. 281 
Sa.vbrook (sa'ijrSSk). 29 
"Scalawags". 457 
Scandinavians (skan'dl-na'vl-anz), 544, 

547 
Schoolbooks. of the colonists. 81 
Schoolhouses. in the colonies. 80 
Schools, in the colonies. 78-82 

on the frontier. 307-308 
Schuyler (ski'ler), Philip, 153 
Schuylers, 63 

Schuylkill River (skool'kil), 142 
Scotch (skoch). 34. 64. 65 
Scotch-Irish. 37, 64-65, 66, 79, 83. 108, 

193, .542 
Scotland (skot'land), 35, 62. 65 
Scott (skot). General Winfleld, 366-367. 

381-382 
Secession. 403-404 
Second Day Adventists. 334 
Seminoles (sem'I-nolz). 332 
Senate. 166, 169-170. 172. 173 
Senecas (sen'S-kaz). 46 ' 
Separatists. 24-25 
Serapis (sS-ra'pis), the, 148 
Serbia (sur'bi-d). 573. 576 
Servants, indentured. 51 
Se^^er (s§-ver'), John. ISO. 182, 189 
.Seward (su'erd), William H.. 352, 378, 

380. 394. 402. 446. 467 
Sewing niacjiine. 386-387 
Seymour (se'mor). Horatio. 464 
Shafter (shaf'ter). General William R.. 560 
Shannon (shan'iSn). 245 
Shawnees (sh6-nes')._46. 180 
Shays' Rebellion (shayzK 163 
Shenandoah (shen"an-do'd) . 44 
Sheridan (sher'I-dan). General Philip 

- Henry. 430-431. 467 
Sherman Anti-Trust Act (shur'mJn). 516, 

531 
Sherman. Roger. 165 
Sherman Silver Purchase Act, 519 
Sherman. General W. T.. 369. 426. 427, 

428 
marching through Georgia, 428-429 
portrait of. 427 
Shiloh (shi'16). battle of. 417-418 
Sickles, (sik'lz). General Daniel E., 423 
Silver, free coinage of. 517-520 
Sioux (soo). 500-501 
Sitting Bull. 501 
Slater (sla'ter). Samuel. 275 
Slave life. 340-346 
Slave owners. 340-341 
Slavery. 51, 337-352 

introduced in Virginia, 22 

causes differences in the Constitutional 

Convention, 166-167 



INDEX 



621 



early history of, 337-338 

life in the slaveholding states, 340-346 

in Congress, 350-351 

becomes the question of the hour^ 351- 
352 

controversy over. 374-376 

the quarrel over renewed, 390-391 

the end of, 443-445 
Slaves, 13, 51, 340-344, 439-440 
Slave trade, 167, 338 
SlideU (sli-del'), John, 365, 410 
Smith (smith). Captain John, 20-21, 63 
Smith, Joseph, 334 
Socialists, 530 
Sons of Liberty. 113 
South, life in the, 259-260, 267 

solid, 460 

the growth of a new, 460-463 
South America (d-mer'I-kd), 8-9, 10, 12, 

13, 15, 234 
South Carolina (ka"ro-li'nd) , 33, 46, 51, 
52. 63, 124, 149, 150, 188, 403, 458, 
462, 466 
South Dakota (dd-ko'tn), 497, .502 
Spain (span), 4, 10, 38, 87, 104, 149, 152, 
199, 222, 2.52, 406 

rivalry with England. 15-18 

sells Florida to United States, 251 

at war with United Statas, 550-557 
Spaniards, 9. 557-560 

win an empire in the New World. 9-12 

control the Mississippi, 199 
Spanish Armada (ar-ma'dd), 17-18, 87 

results of its defeat, IS 
Spanish War, 557-560 
Speaker of the House, 1 70 
Specie circular, 328 
Specie payment, 442 
Spoils system. 321-323. 464. 526-.527 
Spottsylvania Court House (spot'sll-va' 

ni-d) . battle of, 430 
Stamp Act, 111-113 

resistance to, 113 

repeal of. 113 
Standard Oil Company, 509 
Stanton (stan'tijn), Edwin M., 446, 448, 

457 
Stark (stark), John, 129. 143, 154 
"Star-Spangled Banner", the, 247 
States, first governments in, 157-158 

selftshness of, 163 

ratify the Constitution, 167-169 

powers forbidden to, 171 
Steamboats, 279-281 
Steam engine, 275-277 
Steel, 473-474 

Stephens (ste'venz), Alexander H., 404 
Stephenson (ste'ven-sijn) , George, 287 
Steuben (stu'ben), Frederick William. 

Baron von. 144 
Stevens (ste'venz), Thaddeus, 453 

portrait of, 453 
Stony Point, 145 
Stowe (sto), Harriet Beecher, 383 
Strikes, 511-512 
Stuart (stii'ert), Gilbert, 269 
Stuyvesant (sti've-sant) , Peter, 31, 34 
Sugar Trust, 509 
Sullivan (sul'I-van), General John, 145, 

153, 181 
Sumner (siim'ner), Charles, 393, 394, 453 

portrait of, 453 
Sunday schools, 267, 334 



Superstition, 67-68 
Supreme Court, 172, 198 

Sussex (sus'eks), 578 

Sutter (siit'er),^ Captain John A,, 369 

Sweden (swe'den), 62 

Swedes, 31, 42, 63, 65-66, 542 

Swiss (swls), 297 

Syrians (slr'I-anz), 546 



Taft (taft), William H , 525, 526, 527, 530, 
531, 

portrait of, 525 
Talleyrand (tal'I-rand). Prince Charles 

Maurice, 212, 213. 225 
Tariff. 198. 281-283, 323-324 

of 1789. 198 

of 1816, 283 

of 1824, 283 

of 1828, 283 

of 1832, 325 

compromise, 1833, 326 

differing opinions on. 512-513 

during the Civil War. 512 

C^Ieveland and the. 513-514 

McKinley Act. 514 

Wilson Act. 514 

Dingley Act. 521 

Payne-Aldrich Act. 521 

Underwood Act. 531 
Tarleton (tiirl'tun), Colonel Sir Banastre, 

151 
Taxation, without representation, 110-111 

second British attempt to tax, 113-117 

the tea tax. 119-120 

in Washington's administration. 198- 
199 

diuing the Ci\'il War, 441, 443 
Tavlor (ta'ler) , General Zachary, 365-366, 
375, 380 

portrait of. 376 
Tecumseh (te-kiim'se), 239, 243 
Telegraph, 289 

Tennessee (ten"e-se'), 177, 179-180, 188, 
189, 190, 224, 296, 299, 308, 408, 462, 
488 
Tennessee River, 182, 298-299 
Tenure of Office Act, 456 
Teutons (tu'tons), 3-4 

Texas (tek'sds). 93, 229, 2.51, 356-362, 368, 
380. 403. 416. 461. 462. 474, 488, 494 
Thames (temz), battle of, 242 
Thomas (tom'ds). General George H., 426, 
427. 428 

portrait of. 426 
Ticonderoga (ti-kon'der-o'gd), 100, 103, 

132, 142 
Tilden (til 'den), Samuel_J., 466 
Tippecanoe (tip''e-kd-noo'), battle of, 239 
Tobacco, 17, 22, .50, 51 
Toleration. 25. 27-28. 270 

in Maryland. 24 

lack of in the colonies, 85 

in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, 85 
Tools, of the colonists. 50-51 
Toombs (toomz). Robert, 376 
Tories, see Loyalists 
Toussaint L'Ouverture (too'san'loo'vgr'- 

tUr'), 223-224 
Townshend Acts (toun'zcnd), 113-114 
Townshend, Charles, 114 
Township, in New England, 53 ' 

In the West, 186-187, 307 



622 



INDEX 



Trade, colonial, 52 

down the Mississippi, 221-223 

suffers at the hands of England and 
France, 234-235 

in the early republic, 263-264 
Trafalgar (traf"al-gar'), 233 
Transportation, early, 264-266. 387-388 

early Western, 492 
Travel, in the colonies, 77-78 

in the early republic, 256. 264-266 
Travis (trav'is), Colonel, 358 
Treaty, 

of Utrecht, 98-99 

of Paris. 1763, 104, 109 

of Alliance with France, 146 

of Paris, 1783, 152-153 

Jay's, 208 

with France (1800), 213 

Pinckney's, 222 

of Ghent, 248 

Webster- Ash burton, 356 

of peace with Mexico, 367 

of Washington, 468 

of peace with Spain, 560 

of peace in 1919, 592-.593 
Trent Affair (trent), 410 
Trenton (tren'tiin), 196 
Trenton, battle of, 141 
Trumbull (trum'bul), John, 269 
Trusts. .-)09-51] , 521, 525, 529-531 
Turkey (tur'kl), 573 
Turks (turks). 5, 330, 588 
Turner (tur'ner), Nat. 347 
Turnpikes. 265. 283-286 
Tuskegee (tus-ke'ge), Alabama, 463, 549 
Tutuila (too°too-e'la). 563 
Tweed (twed), William M.. "Boss". 465 
Tyler (tl'ler). John, 329, 355-356, 359, 362 

U 

Uncle Tom's Cabin. 383 
Underground Railroad, 375, 382-383 
Union, gro^vth of. 121-124 

early attempts at. 122 
Union Pacific Railroad. 451 
United Garment Workers. 552 
United Mine Workers. 552 
United States. 1-2. 18. 54, 62, 87, 104, 109, 
230, 244 

in the World War, 573-594 
Utah (u'to), 334, 368, 380. 502, 528 
Utrecht (u'trekt). Treaty of, 98-99 



Valley Forge. 142 

the camp at. 143-144 
Van Buren (van bu'ren). Martin, 328-329, 

361, 362, 375 
\'an Rensselaers (van ren'se-ler.s) , 63 
Vasco da Gama (da gii'ma), 6 
Venezuela (ven"e-zwe'la), 556. 557 
Venice (ven'Is). 5 
Vera Cruz (va'ril kroos'). 367, 570 
Verdun (ver'dun'). 575 
Vermont (ver-m6nt'). 188, 308 

Verrazano (ver'riit-sii'no), 87 

Vespucius, Americus, Vespucci (v6s-poo'- 

<;he). Amerigo (ii'ma-re'go). 9 
Vice President. 170 

Vicksburg (viks'burg). 310. 419, 420, 421 
Villa (vel'la), Francisco, 571 
Vincennes (vto'sdnz), 177, 182, 183 



Virginia (ver-jln'T-d), 17. 37. 42. 43. 44. 49, 
51, 52. 63. 72. 85. 100. 125. 129, 130, 
134, 164, 166, 177, 181, 184-185, 188. 
189, 190 

settled by the English, 20-23 

tobacco in, 22 

unfree labor in. 22 

growth of govermnent in, 22-23 

Indian wars in, 48 

schools in, 79-80 

protests against Stamp Act. 110-111 

appoints committee of correspondence, 
123 

revolutionary fighting in, 151-152 

ratifies the Constitution, 169 

resolutions, 214 

secedes, 408 
Virginians, 62, 83, 100 
Viviani (ve-vya-ne') , Rene, 580 

W 

Wales (walz), 62 

War of 1812. causes. 233-240 

campaigns, 240-248 

navy in. 242. 243-247 

results of. 248-249. 275. 281-282. 312 
"War Hawks". 237-240 
Washington (wosh'Ing-tun), Booker T.. 

.548 
Washington, City of, 247 
Washington. George. 100. 101. 102. 105, 
123. 130, 164. 165, 196. 262. 213. 219, 
253, 555 

takes Boston. 132 

campaign in New York. 138-140 

campaign in New Jersey, 140-141 

in the campaign for Philadelphia. 141- 
142 

at Valley Forge. 142-143 

in the closing years of the Revolution. 
145 

at Yorktown. 151-152 

character of. 153, 210 

in the Constitutional Convention. 166 

administration of, 196-210 

Farewell Address of, 209-210 
Washington, State of, 250, 363, 368, 498, 

502 
Wasp, 244 

Watauga Settlement (wd-to'gd). 180 
Watt (w6t). James 276-277 
Wayne (wan). General ("Mad") Anthony, 
145, 153, 190 

portrait of, 189 
Webster's "Spelling Book",(web'ster), 267 
Webster. Daniel. 316. 317. 321. 324-325, 
356. 359. 378. 379-380, 404 

portrait of. 321 
Welsh (welsh). 65 
Wesley (wes'll). John. S3 
West, pioneers, of. 260 

rise of the Middle, 296-315 

reasons for rajiid growth of. 296-297 

geography of settlement in. 298-301 

journe.v to, 301 . 304 

pioneer life in, 304-308 

rising cities in, 309-312 

influence of, 312 314 
West, Benjamin, 269. 2X0 
West India Company (In'dl-d), .30, 31 
West Indi&s (In'diz), 13, 15, 52, 53. 58, 

118, 206, 2.34 
West Point, 145 



INDEX 



623 



West Virginia (ver-jln'l-d). 408, 445 
"Western Reserve", 301 
Western Union Telegi'aph Company, 50S 
Westinghouse (w&t'Ing-hous") , George, 

479 
Welhcrsfleld (weth'erz-feld), 29 
Wh.cling (hwel'Ing), 190 
WliiKs. 318, 329-330, 355-356, 361-302, 

375, 381, 391, 394 
W^hiskey Insurrection, 199 
Whiskey Trust, 509 
AVliite (hwit), Henry, 592 
White Plains, 138 
Wliitnian thwlt'nian). Dr. Marcus, 360- 

361 
'Whitman, Walt, 440, 448, 539 
Whitney (hwlt'nl), Eli, 277-278 
Whittier (hwlt'l-er), John Greenleaf, 74- 

75, 332-333, 349, 379, 383, 388, 401 . 

440 
Wilderness, battle of, 430 
AVilkes (wilks). Captain Charles, 410 
William and Mary College (wll'yum), 82 
William III, 56 

W^illiaras (wil'yumz). Roger. 27-28, 63 
Wilmington (wil'ming-tiSn), 151 
Wilmot (wtl'mot), David, 369 
Wilmot Proviso, 369, 374 
Wilson (wll'sfln), James, 165 
Wilson, William L., 514 
Wilson, Woodrow, .526, 530, 531, 570, 571, 

576. 578. 579-580, 590, 592-593, .596 
portrait of. .526 
Windsor (win'zer), 29 
Winthrop (win'thriip), John, 26, 29, 63 



Wisconsin (wls-k6n'sln) , 184, 187, 301, 

331, 362, 384 
Wisconsin River, 90 
Witchcraft, 67-68 
Wolfe (w6&lf). General James, 102, 103, 

109 
portrait of, 102 
Woman suffrage, 528-529 
Wood (wood). General Leonard, 561 

portrait of, 561 
World's Fairs, 481-482 
World War, 573-599 
Wright Brothers (rit), 539 
Wyoming (wT-o'mlng), 502, 528 
Wyoming Valley, 181 
Writs of Assistance, 110, 114 



X. Y. Z. Affair. 212-213 



Yale College (yal). 82 

York (york), Penns.ylvania, 422 

Yorktown (york'toun), surrender at, 151- 

1.52 
Yosemite Valley (yo-sem'i-te). 503 
Young (yung), Brigham, 334, 502 
Young Men's Christian Association, 437, 

591 



Zanesvllle (zanz'vil), 310 



1161 











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